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UPFRONT

EDITOR’S DESK

www.canadianlawyermag.com ISSUE 50.01 | MAY 2026 EDITORIAL

SALES & MARKETING

Managing Editor Tim Wilbur

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Delegation is not a cybersecurity strategy

E

very lawyer understands that confidentiality is sacred. Far fewer can tell you, right now, exactly where all their clients’ data resides, who has access to it, and what would happen if any of those systems were compromised.

That gap between the principle lawyers hold dear and their actual command of the digital infrastructure that stores and transmits client information is the central vulnerability of modern legal practice. And it is one that too many firms are failing to address.

The instinct at most firms is to treat cybersecurity as a technical problem and delegate it accordingly. As Borden Ladner Gervais partner Eric Charleston observes in this issue’s feature on law firm cybersecurity (p. 29), “Cybersecurity is still treated by a lot of firms as an IT issue, rather than a firm-wide risk management priority.” The result, he tells Jessica Mach, is control gaps that leave firms exposed – not because their IT teams are incompetent but because the lawyers and leaders who should be overseeing them lack the knowledge to evaluate whether the protection is adequate.

The lawyer who cannot account for the security of their clients’ data is not meeting the standard that confidentiality demands Mach’s reporting lays bare how far that exposure extends. Firms are failing to audit third-party vendors with whom they share sensitive client data. Others cling to on-premise servers in the belief that maintaining their own infrastructure is safer than relying on major cloud providers – a conviction the experts she speaks to argue is dangerously misplaced. And when a vendor suffers a breach, it is the law firm that remains accountable to the client.

The risk does not stop at any single firm. As cybersecurity consultant Mazdak Araghrez points out, “If the weakest link in that chain is a smaller law firm which hasn’t got the right cybersecurity protections in place, it opens up the threat profile to everybody in that chain.” Every firm you work with, and every firm opposing counsel works with, becomes part of your security perimeter.

None of this is merely a technology problem. It is a professional obligation. The lawyer who cannot account for the security of their clients’ data is not meeting the standard that confidentiality demands. The digital age has not changed that duty. It has simply made it far harder to fulfil.

Tim Wilbur, managing editor

Canadian Lawyer is published 2 times a year by KM Business Information Canada Ltd. KEY MEDIA and the KEY MEDIA logo are used under licence by KM Business Information Canada Ltd. CANADIAN LAWYER is a trademark of KM Business Information Canada Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents may not be reprinted without written permission. The opinions expressed in articles are not necessarily those of the publisher. Information presented is compiled from sources believed to be accurate; however, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions.

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CONNECT WITH US Got a story or suggestion, or just want more information? @canlawmag

CONTENTS

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UPFRONT 01 Editor’s desk

Address, don’t delegate, cybersecurity

04 News analysis

Can LSBC win fight for self-regulation?

15

PEOPLE 12 Behind the scenes

SPECIAL REPORT

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TOP PERSONAL INJURY BOUTIQUES

Leading firms stay on top of recent developments in the field

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Danielle Robitaille enhances firm culture at Henein Hutchison Robitaille

OPINION 28 Lawyers’ mental health

Protecting the public and the profession

32 Apprenticeship at risk

AI fluency training in firms critical for new lawyers

FEATURES

CYBERSECURITY

FEATURES

Reduce risks – protect client data, prioritize firm wide, and collaborate with other firms

06 Faster, denser, riskier files Conveyancing tools need to keep up

FEATURES PROFILE

CROSS EXAMINED

BEST OF INHOUSE INTERVIEWS

In-house counsel making a lasting impression on their companies and the legal field

Norton Rose Fulbright Canada’s Imran Ahmad on strategic negotiation of cross-border data transfers

Canadian LAW AWARDS 2026

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41 Building more homes

Push and pull of taxes and incentives

SPECIAL REPORT 52 Top Criminal Law Boutiques

Strategic preparation is key to successful defence for the firms voted the best in the country

FEATURES

CANADIAN LAW AWARDS 2026

Honouring talented lawyers transforming Canada’s legal landscape

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UPFRONT

NEWS ANALYSIS

LSBC fights for self-regulation The Law Society of BC and the Trial Lawyers Association of BC are challenging a BC law slated to give elected lawyers less say in how the bar is regulated, writes Jessica Mach. Will they succeed?

ON A grey Vancouver morning last October, lawyers clad in black packed a downtown Vancouver courtroom waiting for the arrival of BC Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Skolrood. Representing the Crown, the Law Society of BC, the Trial Lawyers Association of BC, and a slew of intervenors, the lawyers were preparing to make their case in a weeks-long trial for or against legislation that, if not successfully challenged, will fundamentally change how lawyers are regulated in the province.

Notably, the proposed regulator will feature a new governance structure. The LSBC is currently overseen by a board of 25 lawyers and up to six non-lawyers; other lawyers across the province elect the lawyer members.

In contrast, the new regulator will be governed by a 17-person board, of which nine members will be lawyers. Only five of those nine lawyers will be elected by lawyers across BC, meaning lawyer-elected lawyers will no longer hold a majority. The remaining board members will be selected by notaries,

“An independent bar can only be preserved by structures that ensure appropriate distance from the state. Without self-governance and self-regulation, there is an institutional opening of the door to government control and interference” Craig Ferris, Lawson Lundell LLP (representing the Law Society of British Columbia) The legislation in question, the Legal Professions Act, received royal assent in 2024.

For decades, the LSBC had been tasked with regulating lawyers across the province. The new law proposes a more streamlined approach: getting rid of the LSBC and establishing a new legal regulator that will oversee not only lawyers but also paralegals and notaries.

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paralegals, the lieutenant governor in council, and other board members.

The LSBC and the Trial Lawyers Association of BC both filed constitutional challenges to the Legal Professions Act in court shortly after the law passed.

But on April 29, Skolrood dismissed the challenges, ruling that the legislation

neither improperly undermines the independence of the bar nor violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The chief justice added that the BC legislature has the authority to enact the law, paving the way for it to be implemented.

The same afternoon the court released Skolrood’s decision, the Trial Lawyers Association of BC indicated it would likely file an appeal. The LSBC said it was also considering appealing the ruling. Both organizations said that in spite of Skolrood’s findings, their stance remains the same: the bar must be independent, and lawyers must be able to serve their clients without the spectre of government interference.

On that first day of trial in October, Lawson Lundell LLP partner Craig Ferris, representing the LSBC, had told Skolrood that the law society had no issue with the concept of a single legal regulator for lawyers, paralegals, and notaries. What the law society disagreed with was the notion of a new governance structure that effectively gives lawyer-elected lawyers less power than they currently hold at the LSBC. “An independent bar can only be preserved by structures that ensure appropriate distance from the state,” Ferris said.

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LEGAL PROFESSIONS ACT TIMELINE March 2022 – BC announces its intention to establish a single regulator for all legal professionals May 2024 – Legal Professions Act receives royal assent July 2024 – The BC Supreme Court denies the LSBC and TLABC’s request to issue an injunction to stop the Legal Professions Act from going into effect. Both groups move forward with lawsuits to challenge the law’s constitutionality

“While the legislature has historically chosen a self-governance model, that model is not constitutionally mandated as a requirement for maintaining an independent bar” Ronald Skolrood, BC Supreme Court Chief Justice “Without self-governance and selfregulation, there is an institutional opening of the door to government control and interference,” he added. “The manner in which lawyers are regulated impacts the manner in which they carry on their duties to clients, courts, and the administration of justice.”

In the days that followed, Crown counsel Emily Lapper pushed back, arguing that the Legal Professions Act does not interfere with “lawyer independence to such an extent that it is unconstitutional.” Lapper also argued that neither self-governance nor self-regulation guarantees or is necessary for lawyers’ independence.

Among the intervenors in October’s trial, several took issue with the LSBC and the Trial Lawyers Association of BC’s stance that the

2024 law is unconstitutional and threatens the bar’s independence.

The Indigenous Bar Association argued that the bar’s independence is not a constitutional principle that can be used to invalidate legislation. The organization also took issue with the plaintiffs’ argument that the Legal Professions Act’s establishment of an Indigenous council – which would advise the new legal regulator on aligning its practices with BC’s reconciliation mandates – creates a model of “co-governance” that interfere with the bar’s independence.

The Society of Notaries Public of BC, meanwhile, told Skolrood that the constitution does not guarantee the independence of lawyers but, rather, that of legal professionals, meaning the Legal Professions Act does not breach the constitution.

September 2025 – BC Attorney General Niki Sharma says the Legal Professions Act will not go into effect before Skolrood issues a decision, unless the LSBC and Society of Notaries Public of BC are given 30 days’ notice October 2025 – The parties argue their cases at a two-week summary trial April 2026 – BC Supreme Court Chief Justice Skolrood dismisses the LSBC and TLBAC’s actions In his decision, Skolrood said he agreed with the plaintiffs’ stance that the independence of the bar is an “unwritten constitutional principle.” However, he ultimately concluded that the BC legislature has the authority to determine how lawyers should be regulated.

“While the legislature has historically chosen a self-governance model, that model is not constitutionally mandated as a requirement for maintaining an independent bar,” the justice wrote. He then quoted an article by Ontario Court of Appeal justice Patrick Monahan: “It is the independence of the profession that is constitutionally protected, but not necessarily its ‘self governing status.’”

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SPECIAL PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

REAL ESTATE

Beyond legacy conveyancing: AI-powered platform Ontario real estate files are faster, denser, and riskier than ever. Stephanie Rose and Margaret Jones explain why data architecture, AI, and relationships now define conveyancing technology

ONTARIO REAL ESTATE deals may move fast, but they’re also fraught. From compressed timelines and last-minute instructions to complicated deal structures and ever-higher client expectations, what used to be straightforward conveyancing is now a high-stakes exercise in risk management.

Yet many firms still rely on legacy tools that demand endless manual data entry, clunky workarounds, and hours of document review just to be confident nothing critical has been missed.

“Traditional conveyancing hasn’t kept up with emerging AI technology,” says Stephanie Rose, VP of sales & operations at Quintalink.

“On top of that, those longstanding solutions can be very costly – and the real estate market is competitive. Lawyers are being forced to think differently as exorbitant costs could lead to lost business.”

A perfect storm of complexity, cost, time, and risk Foundationally, things are changing. Clients expect faster service and more consistent communication, while firms grapple with uncertain markets and fee sensitivity.

Each real estate file brings its own unique circumstances, and matters are increasingly structurally complex.

A prime example is the time lawyers spend on reviewing status certificates, which

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Rose calls “notoriously complex.” Lawyers spend more than four hours reviewing documents – often dealing with inconsistent formats and varying scan quality – while hoping no critical information is buried that could expose the client to additional costs.

Sometimes, even after doing all the work, the deal falls through.

All this lands on a document layer that’s already straining capacity. Agreements of purchase and sale, mortgage instructions, and insurance binders consume significant time in every transaction. Quintalink uses industry-leading AI tools to solve these challenges.

Then there’s what Rose calls many firms’ hidden mistake: assuming data is safe simply because they’re using a wellknown platform. That standard approach leaves real ambiguity around who owns the data, who can access it, and what can be done with it – and, as Rose notes, major corporations across industries have already exposed sensitive client information to breaches, whether through negligent data handling or outright sharing with third parties.

“In an era of rising cybersecurity threats and identity theft, protecting that data is essential to managing professional liability and keeping E&O exposure in check,” Rose notes.

Industry changes have made space for a new age of real estate transactions, one that calls for advanced technology and more comprehensive integrations. They’ve also opened the door to AI, which quickly moved from a buzzword to necessary infrastructure.

“Years ago, you’d pull paper files from cabinets and wait weeks for documents in the mail; then, PDFs and email meant everything moved in minutes,” Rose says. “AI is the next step in that evolution.”

How one Canadian platform is rethinking conveyancing At Quintalink, the answer to this new reality starts with re-engineering the foundation that conveyancing runs on: data ownership, document workflows, and how AI fits into the file.

Quintalink gives each firm its own dedicated, web-based server. Isolation means a breach at one firm doesn’t touch the other, and if something does go wrong, Quintalink’s support team steps in directly to resolve it. It also allows the platform to be tailored to specific use cases. For example, a firm needed to split proceeds among more than 10 vendors and had to re-edit each time the deal was extended.

“We delivered a feature to their server which allowed them to split the payment by percentage or fraction and they loved it, so we decided to further deliver it to all Quintalink users,” Margaret Jones, document manager, recalls. “That kind of responsiveness isn’t possible when everyone is locked into the same rigid system.

Quintalink continues to push into new territories based on client feedback and breaking barriers with ever-changing new technology – it’s where their partnerships shine brightest.

Status certificates, a pain point for condo work, can be uploaded to an automated status certificate review tool in Quintalink that produces an overview and customizable summary report, flagging financial issues, low reserve funds, leasing and rule constraints, and even missing documents, with citations back to source pages.

“The system is designed to handle the reality of status certificates, and it extracts

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only from the document itself – no outside information, no hallucinations, no assumptions,” Jones explains. “What previously took hours of careful review now takes minutes, giving lawyers the confidence that critical details have been surfaced without relying on memory or hoping nothing was overlooked.”

Quintalink is also changing the way that multi-property transactions are processed.

They can be worked on under a single file, which could include different ownership structures, title issues, and registration dates across jurisdictions, and no practical limit on the number of properties that can be added to a collateral/blanket mortgage.

Jones says, “You can customize your multi-property documents or use the standard ones we have available. The beauty about the documents is that they are generated based on all collateral information inputted into the system.”

On the compliance side, Quintalink is built around the Law Society of Ontario’s online ID verification requirements by integrating with major IDV providers, so firms can continue using the solutions they prefer while having the verification reports flow directly into the file. There’s also a bi-directional integration with leading accounting software that lets client and matter data sync between systems and pushes trust and general account entries

directly from the conveyancing workflow, reducing duplicate data entry and supporting cleaner audit trails.

“Your records are already organized, already connected, and already where an auditor would expect to find them,” Rose summarizes. “Quintalink gives you all the tools to complete a real estate transaction where compliance becomes a natural by-product.”

Finally, Quintalink offers a library of scenario-aware documents that can be aligned with a firm’s preferred wording, tone, and structure, straying purposefully from most solutions’ standardized approach. If you work with a particular lender, for instance, you can create a dedicated folder for them.

“Our goal is for customers to generate documents without having to edit,” Jones says. “Quintalink understands how you work, so a high turnaround time is a top priority.”

Quintalink: a program designed to adapt Quintalink has all the integrations needed, including mortgage processing, land registry, title insurance, and many more. It runs on an ethos of adaptation that extends to how the platform itself is built and supported.

Early on, Rose recalls taking Quintalink’s head of IT – who, with a PhD in AI and

computer science, is referred to as “Dr. IT” – to meet a potential client when the program was still in its raw stages. The lawyer handed over a “laundry list” of requirements that had to be met before they would even consider adopting it.

At first, Rose saw each point as a nail in Quintalink’s coffin. But two weeks later, every last item had been addressed.

“My mind was blown,” she says. “It was at that moment I realized we had something special here. Our team designed this program to adapt not only to industry standards but also to the needs of individual clients.”

Soon, that same client came back with a verdict that underscored the value of that approach: after trying all available options, they reported that Quintalink got it right – they could easily create and edit documents within an intuitive layout that aligned with their workflow.

For Rose, comments like that go beyond software. The experience behind the tech – the service, support, and relationship – matters just as much, as Quintalink proves by charging by file rather than locking firms into long-term contracts. Positioned as a Canadian partner for firms big and small, Quintalink gives practices the ability to scale usage up or down as real estate work ebbs and flows. And, of course, the team is there to provide support whenever it’s needed.

“Grow with a company that’s committed to growing alongside you while providing stability and support,” Rose sums up, adding that at a time when the conveyancing landscape is defined by complexity, cost pressures, and rising risk, that promise of adaptability and partnership may be as important as any individual feature Dr. IT might roll out next.

Margaret Jones specializes in coding and organizing legal documents to streamline workflows, reduce errors, and boost productivity. Stephanie Rose provides consultations and support to help firms streamline operations and improve efficiency in their closing processes.

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FEATURE

CROSS EXAMINED

DATA SOVEREIGNTY REACHES THE C-SUITE Imran Ahmad, who heads Norton Rose Fulbright Canada’s tech group, says cross-border data flows are facing increased scrutiny CANADIAN COMPANIES are no longer treating data localization as a niche compliance task; they are treating it as a strategic choice that affects their exposure to foreign laws and national security risk and ensures operational resilience, says Imran Ahmad, a senior partner at Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP and the firm’s Canadian head of technology and co-head of cybersecurity and data privacy.

For years, cross-border transfers sat in the background of outsourcing deals and privacy policies, handled by boilerplate language and vague assurances from global vendors. That is changing as clients ask hard questions about how statutes such as the US CLOUD Act and the Patriot Act intersect with their use of cloud and SaaS tools. Ahmad says conversations that once felt theoretical now trigger concrete moves to reshape where sensitive systems live.

He sees the sharpest change among hospitals, telecoms, utilities, and other critical infrastructure players, which cannot tolerate uncertainty about who may gain access to their schematics and operational data. “For them, keeping the data within Canada became a real concern,” he says, pointing to clients such as electricity distributors and generators

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where “these are very sensitive schematics that you don’t want out there.” Those organizations now probe whether data ever leaves Canada, how redundancy is architected, and what happens when system failures force data to cross borders.

a more rigorous inventory of critical data sets and vendors.

Regulators are reinforcing this shift.

Canada has yet to replace PIPEDA, and Bill C-27 died when Parliament was prorogued. However, Ottawa cannot stand

“You can tier your data; you don’t have to put it in one place” Those concerns are leading to concrete action. Ahmad describes organizations that have already taken “some steps to repatriate, where it wasn’t the case, the data into Canada,” either by switching to vendors that can guarantee local hosting or by pressing existing providers to move it into Canada.

Once these projects start, data location stops being a narrow IT issue and becomes part of wider governance work that maps what the organization holds, ranks it by sensitivity, and decides what must stay on Canadian soil.

That governance work is no longer confined to policies that sit unread on a shelf.

Organizations are finally aligning retention, deletion, and storage standards with explicit rules on jurisdiction and access, and building

still if it wants to preserve the EU adequacy ruling that allows data to move freely between Canada and Europe. Ahmad underscores that Europeans have “been very kind to us, to put it mildly, to keep that process in place.” He expects any new federal law to follow Quebec’s lead, which requires organizations to conduct a privacy impact assessment before transferring data outside the province.

Even under existing rules, expectations around vetting foreign vendors have tightened. Ahmad notes that, even though our federal privacy statute is not as robust as it should be now, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner still provides guidance on data transfers. That means a Canadian organization that wants to use a foreign cloud provider

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PROFILE Name: Imran Ahmad Current position: Partner, head of technology (Canada), and co-head, cybersecurity and data privacy, Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP Key dates: » 2011: Joined Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP as associate » 2016: Joined Miller Thomson LLP as partner » 2018: Joined Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP as partner » 2020: Joined Norton Rose Fulbright LLP as partner

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FEATURE

CROSS EXAMINED

can no longer treat this as a straightforward procurement choice. He says companies must conduct privacy and cyber-impact assessments before negotiating contractual protections, such as data deletion rights and limits on cross-border redundancy paths.

Contract language itself is also under greater scrutiny. For traditional cloud and outsourcing deals, Ahmad says, “data deletion is one that comes up a lot,” and he spends time with clients on data redundancy, and on data deletion or suppression after contracts end.

These points, once treated as boilerplate, now go to the heart of who can access an organization’s data, where, and for how long.

and telecoms “have the wherewithal, financially and just knowledge-wise, to build” the domestic capacity.

Crucially, the data sovereignty discussion has moved to the top. He sees boards engaging directly with data residency issues as part of their oversight of strategy and geopolitical risk. Directors want to know whether the company is “well positioned to make sure this happens in a way where we’re not abused or taken advantage of.”

For Canadian organizations that want to stay ahead of tightening localization and cross-border rules, rather than scramble when regulators or customers come calling,

“We have huge R&D and innovation; we have world-class companies – we should be able to negotiate aggressively as needed” Artificial intelligence sharpens that risk calculus further. Ahmad contrasts a conventional database, where a company can honour a right to be forgotten request by deleting the fields tied to an individual, with an LLM trained on the same data. “You go to an LLM and say, ‘All the data I gave you by accident or that I don’t want to give you anymore – I want you to delete it.’ That is almost impossible to do,” he says. That reality is pushing corporate clients to draw harder lines in AI contracts.

Financial institutions and telecommunications companies are shaping the response inside Canada. Ahmad points to existing OSFI expectations that already require some banking data to be onshore, and to the heavy investment by telcos and others in Canadian hyperscale data centres, as signals that localization is moving from theory to infrastructure. He says Canada’s financial institutions

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Ahmad suggests a few key steps. First, they should invest real time in governance by understanding what data the business has, where it sits, how sensitive it is, and how it is segmented, because “you can tier your data; you don’t have to put it in one place.” Second, they should maintain a detailed inventory of critical third-party providers and push those vendors to provide up-to-date privacy impact and threat assessments, rather than relying on assurances that may be years old.

Canada may see itself as a smaller market compared to the United States. Yet, Ahmad stresses that it remains a G7 economy with sophisticated companies that should negotiate from a position of strength when contracting with foreign vendors. “We have huge R&D and innovation; we have world-class companies – we should be able to negotiate aggressively as needed.”

OFFICE OF THE PRIVACY COMMISSIONER – KEY GUIDANCE ON DATA TRANSFERS Organizations remain accountable for personal information transferred to third parties for processing, including across borders A transfer for processing is not a “disclosure” but requires contractual and practical safeguards Organizations should assess and mitigate risks associated with foreign laws and access by public authorities Transparency is key: privacy notices should clearly explain crossborder data transfers and associated risks

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FEATURE

CROSS EXAMINED

BUILDING FIRM CULTURE FROM WITHIN Managing partner Danielle Robitaille talks about developing a new set of skills as she supports an elite team of litigators

BEING A managing partner at a law firm requires a specific combination of skills that is very different from practising law, says Danielle Robitaille. She describes this as a coach mentality. “If you’re someone who finds themselves being the go-to person for advice and guidance, you may be the kind of person that would suit this sort of role,” she says.

Robitaille leads Henein Hutchison Robitaille LLP with an approach rooted in supporting her firm’s celebrated litigators rather than competing with them.

She spent her first 15 years practising criminal defence before gradually shifting focus toward investigative work and firm management about five years ago. The transition wasn’t accidental. “It’s very difficult to manage a firm when you’re in court a lot,” she notes, explaining how the investigations practice and management responsibilities aligned naturally at her boutique Toronto firm.

Robitaille didn’t stumble into leadership.

She recognized that her firm’s high-profile litigators – including Marie Henein and Scott Hutchison – required someone willing to step up and provide support behind the scenes. “I have these two complete titans at the bar who are extraordinary litigators and really icons who perform best when they’ve got a smooth operating firm supporting them,” she says.

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Her management philosophy centres on a principle she learned from her own mentors: creating environments where lawyers can build their own practices and define their careers.

That philosophy now extends across her firm, particularly in how she’s restructured mentorship, mental health support, and recruitment.

firm’s culture. She recognized that her own career trajectory was shaped as much by lateral connections as it was by formal mentors. “So much has to do with my peer relationships,” she explains. “You’re a team, you’re to work and develop and work on your relationships with your fellow associates.

“I have these two complete titans at the bar who are extraordinary litigators and really icons who perform best when they’ve got a smooth operating firm supporting them” The firm has invested heavily in training its partners on a skill most lawyers never formally develop – delivering timely, actionable feedback. “Very few people are excellent at it naturally,” Robitaille says, emphasizing that this capability is essential for associates to learn and grow without being blindsided during annual reviews. The firm works on this skill under the guidance of Rose Yanco, the firm’s director of professional resources and business development, treating feedback as a core competency rather than an afterthought.

Beyond structured mentorship, Robitaille has prioritized peer relationships among associates as a central component of the

And that’s what makes life fun, ... going to work and seeing people that you care about.”

That philosophy has translated into deliberate efforts to strengthen associate networks across the firm.

Mental health support emerged as another critical priority. Rather than relying on standard employee benefits or waiting lists, Robitaille partnered with a psychology firm to offer two free, anonymous counselling sessions monthly – cutting through logistical barriers that often prevent struggling lawyers from seeking help. “I didn’t want to wait to help associates who were struggling. I didn’t want them to be on a waiting list. I didn’t

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PROFILE Name: Danielle Robitaille Current position: Managing partner, Henein Hutchison Robitaille LLP Key Dates: » 2016: Named as senior counsel to Justice Tulloch at the police oversight review » 2022: Testifies in Parliament on the Hockey Canada investigation » 2023: Takes on the role of managing partner of HHR; inducted as a fellow of The American College of Trial Lawyers » 2024: Named as independent monitor on the deferred prosecution agreement between Aylo, the parent company of Porn Hub, and the Department of Justice of the United States » 2025: Recognized as Managing Partner of the Year at the Canadian Law Awards

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FEATURE

CROSS EXAMINED

want them to have to make six phone calls to get an appointment,” she says. The program has received strong reviews from her associates, and Robitaille hopes other firms will follow suit.

Diversity and inclusion were embedded in the firm’s DNA before Robitaille took the helm, shaped by Marie Henein’s prominent role on the national legal stage. “It is the house that Marie built,” she says. Henein is an Arab Canadian, as is her brother, Peter, also a partner. “We have two proud Arab Canadians as partners in our boutique firm, which is really unusual,” Robitaille notes. This orientation informs recruitment decisions across

leads the investigations practice, with her firm serving as the first Canadian law firm appointed as an independent compliance monitor in a US deferred prosecution agreement. “It’s big game stuff,” she says. “People come to us who have really intractable issues, problems, [and] litigation.”

This cross-training between criminal and civil litigators creates advantages in strategy and critical thinking. Associates work on high-profile matters alongside partners while also developing their own smaller cases – a model Robitaille believes builds stronger lawyers more quickly than relying on supporting work alone.

“You’re a team, you’re to work and develop and work on your relationships with your fellow associates. And that’s what makes life fun” the board. “We receive just totally extraordinary diverse applications across the country.

We have just a wealth of applicants to choose from,” she says.

Speaking of recruitment, Robitaille has grown more discerning about identifying which candidates will thrive specifically at her firm rather than simply being talented lawyers overall. “Will they be a great lawyer at my firm?” she asks herself. “Which is a slightly different question from ‘Will they be a great lawyer?’” This discipline reflects lessons learned over three years of structured student recruitment and ongoing engagement with courts to hire clerks and lateral candidates.

The firm operates at the high end of the legal practice spectrum, handling complex criminal trials, high-stakes civil litigation, regulatory prosecutions, and investigations into corporate compliance issues. Robitaille

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Looking ahead, she sees white-collar crime and corporate compliance as growth areas, particularly as US regulatory activity increasingly engages Canadian firms for cross-border mandates. “These big multinational companies consider Toronto firms and Toronto lawyers as leaders in this area,” Robitaille says, signalling opportunity for her firm and others positioned to serve global clients navigating complex investigations.

When asked about balancing client work with management, Robitaille is refreshingly candid: she hasn’t yet cracked that code.

However, she’s aware of a particular risk – that lawyers trained in problem-solving and crisis management tend to gravitate toward high-stakes issues at the expense of steady, daily management work.

What emerges from her leadership is a practical vision: managing firms requires different skills from practising law, and

KEY CASES

2020

R. v. Chan conviction overturned at the ONCA and upheld at the SCC, s.33 of CC declared unconstitutional; argued at the SCC in November 2021 − R. v. Sullivan, 2020 ONCA 333

2021

Charges withdrawn in casino case, Wei Wei

2024

R. v. Ali Nur, Court of Appeal enters an acquittal on first-degree murder charges − R. v. Shaw, 2024 ONCA 119; twin brothers granted new trial, alleged accomplice acquitted in 2016 “Pizza Pizza” murder case; court orders new trial in Toronto Pizza Pizza murder

those skills can be learned. More importantly, building a strong firm depends on understanding that partners, associates, and the work itself all thrive when someone is thoughtfully focused on creating the conditions for success behind the scenes.

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Proudly sponsored by

SPECIAL REPORT

Top

PERSONAL INJURY BOUTIQUES

2026 Canada’s leading personal injury law firms are shaping outcomes early and carrying that position through to resolution

CONTENTS

PAGE

Feature article............................................................ 16 Methodology ............................................................. 18 Top Personal Injury Boutiques 2026 ...................... 27

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PREPARED AND TRIAL-READY MOST CASES never reach trial, but every case has a turning point. Canada’s best personal injury law firms stand apart by not only seeing that point coming, but by seizing the initiative and acting on it.

That reality sets the bar. Canadian Lawyer ’s Top Personal Injury Law Firms 2026 reflect that standard and, as a collective, they build their cases early and drive them to resolution.

Trial remains the exception in personal injury litigation. Ontario Superior Court figures and Statistics Canada civil courts data place rates at about: • 7.5 percent for non-motor-vehicle matters • 10.2 percent when motor-vehicle claims are included • a broader national range of approximately one in 20 to one in 10 cases proceeding that far

CL’ s readers ranked the country’s leading personal injury firms from a preliminary list, generating 1,753 votes across 57 nominated firms, with the option to nominate additional practices.

Rankings were calculated using a points-based system weighted by position, with firms grouped by region, including the Top 10 in Ontario and the Top 5 in both Western and Atlantic Canada.

The data was combined with Lexpert peer input, senior bar feedback, and regional diversity considerations.

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“Relationship-building is different when people aren’t physically together” David Levy, Howie, Sacks & Henry LLP What has changed in personal injury practice Personal injury litigation is being reshaped by changes in lawyer workflows, prolonged timelines, and client expectations. Across CL ’s best personal injury law firms in Canada, four themes stand out: • in-person interaction has declined • structural and legislative factors are shifting leverage toward insurers • delays and benefit disputes are driving more aggressive litigation • clients are arriving better informed and expecting a more active role in their cases

Less human interaction is changing how cases are managed Remote work and virtual communication have become the norm, changing how lawyers interact with clients, colleagues, and opposing counsel. What was once built through in-person meetings is now handled largely online.

Data from provincial law societies and court administration updates show that

virtual proceedings remain widely used across civil litigation, particularly for case conferences, motions, and mediations, reinforcing a shift that began during the pandemic and has not reversed.

“We’re now settling cases where I’ve never been in the same room as the client … something is lost. I value a handshake and sitting in the same room for important conversations,” says David Levy, managing partner at Howie, Sacks & Henry LLP. He notes the impact extends beyond client relationships to internal collaboration and relationships with the defence bar, where fewer in-person meetings have reduced opportunities to build working rapport. In some cases, in-person settlement meetings have become rare.

Firms also say virtual platforms have changed access to the process itself. Discoveries, mediations, and client meetings are now routinely conducted online, making it easier for injured clients to participate, says Stephen Birman, partner at Thomson Rogers LLP. He notes that convenience comes with trade-offs. His firm has responded by giving clients the option to attend virtual

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Expertly ranked.

Deeply human.

Gluckstein Lawyers is honoured to be recognized as a 2026 Top Personal Injury Boutique.

This distinction reflects a 60-year commitment to a simple truth: trusted expertise is most powerful when it is rooted in Full Circle Care.

True leadership in our field requires more than just legal acumen; it requires a human-first standard of advocacy that protects the inherent dignity of the injured and demands the respect they are rightfully owed.

Through our commitment, Gluckstein Lawyers continues to set the standard for personal injury advocacy across Canada.

1-866-308-7722 ● info@gluckstein.com ● gluckstein.com www.canadianlawyermag.com 17

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“[Technology] tools have been extremely helpful for accident victims who can attend litigation events from the comfort of their home” Stephen Birman, Thomson Rogers LLP

proceedings from the office and using dedicated meeting spaces equipped for remote platforms. “We keep clients informed by providing frequent and regular litigation updates and always ensure our clients understand the next steps in a legal matter,” he says.

Legislative and cost pressures shifting leverage toward insurers Firms point to a combination of legislative change and rising costs for altering how personal injury claims are advanced, with delay increasingly working in favour of insurers.

Regulators and industry groups’ data show claim severity and litigation costs continuing to rise, while statutory deductibles in jurisdictions, such as Ontario, remain a significant barrier for plaintiffs, reinforcing the financial advantage of delay for insurers.

“We’ve responded by issuing claims earlier, foregoing discovery where appropriate, and setting actions down for trial at the first

opportunity,” says Edward Bergeron, founding partner at Bergeron Clifford LLP. He points to discounted past economic loss claims, rising statutory deductibles, and the escalating cost of carrying files as factors increasing the burden on injured clients and their counsel.

Delays and benefit disputes driving earlier litigation In Alberta, persistent court delays and a more aggressive approach from accident benefit providers are changing how firms manage files. Court data and judicial reporting continue to show extended timelines for civil matters, with multi-year delays common in major jurisdictions, and trial dates often set several years out.

“We now obtain interim expert reports early and move quickly to litigation where benefits are terminated,” says Laura Comfort, partner at Cuming & Gillespie LLP. She notes that Section B providers are increasingly terminating benefits early, in

ONTARIO DEDUCTIBLE AND THRESHOLD FIGURES, 2026

$47,913.01

$23,956.52 deductible for Family Law Act claims

$159,708.71

monetary threshold for non-pecuniary loss other than Family Law Act claims

$79,853.70 threshold for Family Law Act claims

Source: FSRA Decisions, 2026 Automobile Insurance Indexation Amounts Guidance

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Earlier this year, Canadian Lawyer asked readers from across Canada to vote on personal injury firms.

They were asked to rank the top firms from a preliminary list, with the option to nominate a firm not on the list.

To be considered in the vote, firms were required to have the majority of their business come from personal injury work. The final rankings were determined by a points system that rewarded firms on a sliding scale for the number of votes received at each ranking. The winners were categorized by geography, including the Top 10 in Ontario and the Top 5 in Western and Atlantic Canada.

The quantitative results were combined, where applicable, with Lexpert peer survey results, feedback from respected senior members of the bar, and regional diversity considerations.

The 2026 Top Personal Injury Boutiques report is sponsored by Carol Bierbrier & Associates (CBA).

January 19 – February 13, 2026 Survey period

57 nominees

1,800

The Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA) guidance says the indexation percentage is 2.4% for 2026. It also sets the Ontario motor-vehicle non-pecuniary loss figures for 2026 at:

deductible for non-pecuniary loss other than Family Law Act claims

METHODOLOGY

votes

some cases testing the limits of pending no-fault legislation. In response, firms are prioritizing early expert evidence to support treatment and, where necessary, litigating wrongful termination to protect access to care.

Timelines are being set earlier, pushing defence counsel and insurance companies

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Proud to be recognized as one of Ontario’s Top Personal Injury Boutiques 2026

by Canadian Lawyer Magazine. trlaw.com www.canadianlawyermag.com 19

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“We negotiate from preparation, not from hope. By the time we’re at the table, our case has been built as though trial is the next step” Cynthia Carels, Weir Bowen LLP

to adhere to them. Trial dates are also set, where appropriate, to maintain pressure on defendants to either negotiate or litigate to resolution.

In Ontario and other regions, practitioners report similar delays, noting that it is no longer something that can be managed away.

Brenda Hollingsworth, co-founding partner at Auger Hollingsworth Accident & Injury Lawyers, says trial timelines now regularly extend beyond five years, even with an aggressive approach to moving cases forward.

Her firm has responded by building cases earlier to create leverage before trial becomes a realistic outcome.

“We’ve been front-end loading the evidence on our case for about five years now to increase opportunities for timely but also generous resolution,” she says.

Clients are more informed and expect greater involvement AI has fundamentally changed how clients approach legal representation, with firms reporting that clients are arriving with sophisticated questions that demand technical answers delivered in a comprehensible fashion.

Legal industry research shows a growing number of clients using online and AIassisted tools to research claims before seeking counsel, raising expectations around responsiveness, transparency, and the level of explanation provided.

“We are intentional and transparent in our communications, making sure clients feel like active participants in their own case, rather

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we win it? Those are not always the same thing,” says Carels.

The team looks beyond records to assess the full context of the claim, including the individual at its centre. It also tests the case from both sides, anticipating how the defence is likely to respond.

Building the case

than passengers in processes they do not understand,” says Weir Bowen LLP partner Cynthia Carels.

Firms are also placing greater emphasis on trauma-informed approaches, recognizing that the emotional complexity of cases has never been more front of mind.

Anatomy of a personal injury case Several of Canada’s Best Personal Injury Law Firms of 2026 share their approach to a case from intake to resolution, and what separates strong outcomes and average ones.

Weir Bowen LLP Trial capability and depth in complex personal injury litigation define this practice, particularly in medical malpractice. Feedback highlights a firm prepared to take on difficult matters and carry them through, supported by experienced lawyers and a teambased approach.

What CL voters said: • “Weir Bowen LLP has a reputation in the industry of not shying away from difficult cases, and also having many important, precedent-setting wins at trial.”

How early case selection and expert framing drive outcomes

Medical evidence is treated as foundational, with work beginning early and built around expert input that can withstand challenge.

“The medical evidence has to do two things: establish that something went wrong and establish that the wrongdoing actually caused the bad outcome,” adds Carels.

Expert selection is approached with equal care, with a focus on specialists who can explain complex issues under cross-examination.

“The right expert does not just support the case; they shape how the entire narrative is understood.”

Negotiation and resolution Negotiation is treated as an extension of preparation. Files are built with trial in mind, and that readiness shapes how resolution is approached. By the time discussions begin, proceeding to trial remains a live option. The outcome is driven by the strength of the case rather than tactics at the table.

Howie, Sacks & Henry LLP Complex, high-value personal injury matters are a core focus, handled through a disciplined litigation approach.

Feedback points to a team that combines technical strength with consistent client communication and credibility across both sides of the bar.

Intake and early case assessment Weir Bowen treats intake as a dual test of viability and outcome.

“At intake, we are asking two questions simultaneously: is there a case here, and can

What CL voters said: • “They stand out because they’re built for serious, high-stakes injury litigation, not high-volume, quick-settlement files.”

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How functional impact, not diagnosis, determined case value Intake and early case assessment At intake, the case raised immediate questions about viability.

The client, a high-level executive, had sustained a mild traumatic brain injury.

The injury was documented, but the absence of significant physical impairment made it unclear whether the claim would meet the threshold.

“At the outset, I wasn’t sure the case was viable,” says Levy.

The assessment turned on functional impact. The client’s role required sustained

cognitive performance, leadership, and decision-making. If he could continue at that level, the claim would have limited value. If not, the financial consequences could be significant.

That effort became the foundation of the case. Once the functional impact was established, expert evidence was used to define the impairment and its financial consequences.

Building the case

Negotiation and resolution

Rather than moving directly to expert evidence, the firm focused on testing the injury in a real-world setting.

“There’s no better evidence of inability than a genuine effort that fails,” Levy says.

The client was encouraged to return to work and engage in rehabilitation. Over time, the limitations became apparent. While he could manage day-to-day activities, the demands of his role exposed the extent of the impairment.

Negotiations were deferred until the long-term outcome was established.

The case ultimately resolved at private mediation, with the client’s documented experience forming the basis of the claim.

“What made the difference was his effort to return to work,” Levy says.

His attempts to resume his role and the challenges he faced were documented by both his employer and medical professionals.

TOP 10 SINCE 2011 This recognition reflects something bigger: our clients who trusted us through life's hardest moments.

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“That removed doubt about what he could or couldn’t do.”

With the impact established and supported by objective evidence, the insurer accepted the claim. The matter resolved for a multimillion-dollar amount.

Bergeron Clifford LLP A disciplined litigation approach is matched by close, ongoing involvement in the clients’ recovery. Feedback highlights a team that prepares files with care, communicates consistently, and remains engaged beyond the legal process, including supporting rehabilitation where needed.

What CL voters said: • “They have the client’s best interest at heart and put their money where their mouth is, funding necessary services when declined by the insurer or when other funding is not available, such as paying for case management on a noncatastrophic file without optional benefits, because that is what is needed to get rehab off the ground.”

When trial is the only path forward Intake and early case assessment From the outset, Bergeron Clifford understood both the strength of the claim and the resistance it would face. The case arose from what should have been a routine outpatient procedure that resulted in immediate injury and long-term consequences.

“We knew this case would be fought strenuously by the CMPA … but we believed in the case,” says partner Warren WhiteKnight.

The client experienced chronic pain, functional limitations, and loss of employment, ultimately relocating to manage the financial impact. The consequences extended across all aspects of her life and her family.

The central issue at intake was not whether the injury could be proven, but whether the firm was prepared to carry the case through a fully contested process.

Building the case The evidentiary strategy was built for trial

WHAT VOTERS VALUE MOST IN PERSONAL INJURY FIRMS Client-first approach • “They treat you like a person, not a file.”

Communication that clients can understand • “They explained everything from A to Z, making sure that we were informed every step of the way.”

Compassion and human connection • “They treated me with respect, kindness, and compassion; the team is always available whenever you have any questions.”

Going beyond legal representation • “Support beyond legal advice, including helping connect clients with medical care or rehabilitation resources.”

Responsiveness and accessibility • “Quick responses to any questions and always available to review and ask questions.”

Results that matter • “They consistently deliver outstanding results while providing exceptional client service.”

Trial readiness and litigation strength • “The firm actually goes to trial and fights for clients.”

Persistence and refusal to back down • “They never give up.”

• “Never stopped fighting for my mom’s case.”

Integrity and ethical standards • “Honest, straightforward. They have the best interests of their client at heart.”

Attention to detail and preparation • “Meticulous in their attention to detail; files are complete.”

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“The playing field has tilted in favour of insurers vis-à-vis who gains the benefit of delay” Edward Bergeron, Bergeron Clifford LLP

from the start. It included expert evidence on standard of care, causation, economic loss, and medical impact, supported by close work with treating physicians and specialists.

“The most decisive evidence was that of her specialists who saw her in the immediate aftermath of the injury,” WhiteKnight says.

Those early clinical observations became central to establishing both causation and the extent of the harm. Preparation was continuous and structured to withstand a full defence.

Negotiation and resolution There were no negotiations. “The defence never offered a penny,” WhiteKnight says.

With no settlement position advanced, the firm proceeded on the basis that the case would be decided at trial. Strategy was not shaped by the prospect of resolution but by the need to present the case in full.

“The only thing to do is put your head down and work hard and prepare your case for trial, without fear.”

After 10 years of litigation, the matter was resolved at trial, with a result just under $2 million.

The outcome turned on the strength of the evidence and the ability to present a case that the court accepted as both credible and grounded in common sense.

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“In response to court delays, our firm has shifted to a more proactive, aggressive litigation strategy” Laura Comfort, Cuming & Gillespie LLP

Cuming & Gillespie LLP Complex personal injury and medical negligence claims underpin this practice, supported by a collaborative team structure and experienced lawyers. Feedback highlights a practice that approaches files with care and consistency, maintaining high standards in both advocacy and client service across challenging matters.

What CL voters said: • “Commitment to clients and advancing the law.”

Using clinical credibility to establish liability in complex claims Intake and early case assessment The case required a detailed investigation before litigation could begin.

It involved a complex medical malpractice claim, where viability depended on whether liability and causation could be established in a highly specialized context.

“Our firm maintains a high tolerance for risk … provided there is a clear path to establishing liability and significant potential for compensation,” says Comfort.

Early assessment combined client credibility, the severity of the injury, and preliminary expert input. The decision to proceed turned on whether the case justified the significant investment required.

Building the case The evidentiary strategy centred on expert selection. Rather than relying on professional witnesses, the firm sought specialists with current clinical experience.

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“We avoided ‘career witnesses’ in favour of specialists who are up to date with the latest medical protocols and peer-reviewed research,” Comfort says.

That approach shaped how the case was presented. By grounding the evidence in current clinical practice, the firm advanced a position that was difficult to challenge.

“The decisive factor was the clinical relevance of our experts’ findings.”

Those findings established the link between the alleged breach and the client’s long-term outcome.

Negotiation and resolution Negotiations were approached from an evidence-based position, with readiness to proceed to trial if required.

The matter resolved through mediation, with the outcome shaped by the firm’s preparation and litigation posture.

“The defining factor in the result was our firm’s reputation for litigation readiness,” Comfort says.

By the time mediation occurred, the case had met all procedural milestones and was positioned to move forward. That readiness influenced the defence’s approach and contributed to a settlement that reflected the client’s long-term needs.

Auger Hollingsworth Accident & Injury Lawyers Clear communication and sustained client involvement define the approach here. Feedback highlights a team that explains the process in practical terms, remains accessible, and stays engaged beyond the legal work, including helping clients access care and rehabilitation.

What CL voters said: • “You expect a personal injury lawyer to perform their job objectively and competently. What sets this firm apart is that they consistently do more than what’s required: top-tier work, clear communication, and a team that treats you like a person, not a file.”

Managing contributory negligence and building evidence beyond the record Intake and early case assessment The case involved a 19-year-old passenger who sustained severe orthopaedic injuries in a rural collision.

Liability was not straightforward. While the client was not the driver, he had been heavily intoxicated, entered a vehicle with an impaired driver, and was not wearing a seatbelt.

“We knew there was a risk of serious contributory negligence at the outset,” says Hollingsworth.

The claim was viable, but exposure on liability required a strategy that could address how those factors would be weighed.

Building the case The medical record was extensive. The client underwent more than 10 surgeries and required prolonged rehabilitation.

The firm focused on capturing the experience in a way that the record alone could not.

“We knew that capturing images of his ordeal in the hospital and rehab would be impactful,” Hollingsworth says.

The client and his family documented the recovery process through photographs, creating a visual record of the injury and its impact.

Those images became critical. In a discovery or mediation setting, the client could appear outwardly unaffected. The visual evidence reinforced the medical record and expert reports, grounding the case in lived experience.

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“The justice system is bogged down by extreme delay”

Proving liability and damages in technically complex claims involving a minor

Brenda Hollingsworth, Auger Hollingsworth Accident & Injury Lawyers

Intake and early case assessment

Negotiation and resolution The case required patience. A key issue was the role of a third party, with the overserving establishment initially resisting its contribution to the outcome.

“This client was patient … it took a long time for the over-serving bar to accept that it was going to be a significant contributor to the settlement,” Hollingsworth says.

The firm supported that position with expert evidence. A tavern liability expert and a toxicology expert quantified the client’s impairment, while vocational rehabilitation records established barriers to employment. The at-fault driver pleaded guilty to impaired driving, resolving primary liability. The focus shifted to loss

of income and the role of third parties.

Those combined elements shaped negotiations and contributed to a settlement that reflected the full scope of the client’s losses.

Thomson Rogers LLP Depth in complex personal injury litigation is supported by a sustained focus on trial readiness. Feedback highlights a firm with a large bench of experienced advocates handling high-value matters with discipline and consistency.

What CL voters said: • “Consistently favourable results for clients, many trial victories, large pool of experienced lawyers, longstanding reputation.”

CAROL BIERBRIER & ASSOCIATES

The case involved a minor injured on an amusement park ride while under parental supervision. From the outset, viability turned on two uncertainties: liability in a highly technical setting and damages for a young child whose injuries were difficult to diagnose.

“There were challenges from the outset in establishing liability in a technical area, as well as projecting damages for a young child whose injuries were difficult to diagnose,” says Birman.

The child had been profoundly affected, with the potential for significant long-term consequences. The presence of a parent introduced additional risk, including the possibility of parental involvement in the litigation.

Phone: 905 882 6947 Email: info@cbafuturecare.com Website: cbafuturecare.com

F

ounded in 1998 by Carol Bierbrier, Carol Bierbrier & Associates (CBA) has earned a national reputation for excellence in life care planning. With a foundation rooted in integrity, fairness, and balance, CBA has become a trusted resource for both plaintiff and defence counsel across Canada. The firm is recognized for providing impartial, evidence-based expert testimony that withstands legal scrutiny in complex personal injury litigation.

At the heart of CBA’s success is a team of highly experienced consultants, each bringing decades of clinical and medical legal expertise. Their work is grounded in a deep understanding of healthcare, rehabilitation, and litigation, enabling the development of comprehensive, defensible future care reports and cost projections. This rigorous approach has positioned CBA as a leader in personal injury damage quantification and a key partner in achieving fair outcomes for injured individuals.

With a longstanding commitment to professional excellence, CBA continues to set the standard in life care planning across Ontario and throughout Canada.

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Building the case The firm invested heavily in expert evidence to address both diagnosis and longterm impact.

“We invested tens of thousands of dollars in expert opinions to ensure that our client’s injuries were properly diagnosed, and a life care plan was realistic and substantiated,” Birman says.

Locating the right liability expert required a broad search. The firm canvassed specialists across North America to find expertise in a highly specialized area.

The experience and authority of that expert proved decisive, supporting both liability and the overall structure of the claim.

TOP PERSONAL INJURY BOUTIQUES 2026 ONTARIO Auger Hollingsworth Accident & Injury Lawyers (Ottawa) Phone: 613 233 4529 Email: info@ahinjurylaw.com Website: ahinjurylaw.com Bergeron Clifford LLP (Kingston, Ottawa, Carleton Place, Perth, Pembroke) Phone: 613 384 5886 Email: injurylaw@bergeronclifford.com Website: bergeronclifford.com

Phone: 416 408 4252 Email: info@gluckstein.com Website: gluckstein.com

WEST James H. Brown & Associates (Edmonton, AB) Phone: 780 428 0088 Email: info@jameshbrown.com Website: jameshbrown.com

Bogoroch & Associates LLP (Toronto) Phone: 416 599 1700 Email: info@bogoroch.com Website: bogoroch.com

Negotiation and resolution The matter proceeded over an extended period, with negotiations unfolding over months. Resolution came at mediation, with a trial date approaching.

“The strength of the expert evidence we compiled and our persistence in pushing the matter to the doorstep of trial were likely the defining factors in the result,” Birman says.

Preparation and sustained forward movement shaped the outcome, with the case positioned to proceed if necessary.

Gluckstein Lawyers (Toronto)

Boland Romaine LLP (Aurora) Phone: 905 841 5717 Email: info@bolandromaine.com Website: bolandromaine.com

Howie, Sacks & Henry LLP (Toronto)

Cuming & Gillespie LLP (Calgary, AB) Phone: 403 571 0555 Email: info@cglaw.ca Website: cuminggillespie.com

Pacific Medical Law (Vancouver, BC) Phone: 604 685 2361 Email: info@pacificmedicallaw.ca Website: pacificmedicallaw.ca

Phone: 1 833 862 8143 Email: pnc@hshlawyers.com Website: hshlawyers.com

Weir Bowen LLP (Edmonton, AB)

McLeish Orlando LLP (Toronto, Barrie, Hamilton, Kitchener, Sault Ste. Marie, and St. Catharines)

Slater Vecchio LLP (Vancouver, BC; Montreal, QC)

Where cases are won by the best personal injury law firms

Phone: 866 685 3311 Email: info@mollp.com Website: mcleishorlando.com

EAST

• Intake now carries the weight. Case selection and early framing set direction. Files that are not built with that discipline from the outset are difficult to recover.

• Delay is part of the system. It shapes leverage, cost, and timing. Firms that set pace hold the advantage. Those that follow it lose ground.

• Proof is more exacting. Liability and loss are established through a combination of clinical credibility, real-world evidence, and a record built to withstand sustained scrutiny.

Neinstein LP (Toronto)

Phone: 780 424 2030 Website: weirbowen.com

McKiggan Hebert (Halifax, NS)

Phone: 416 920 4242 Email: info@neinstein.com Website: neinstein.com Oatley Vigmond LLP (Barrie, Toronto, Hamilton, North Bay, North York, Sudbury) Phone: 705 726 9021 Email: info@oatleyvigmond.com Website: oatleyvigmond.com

Phone: 902 423 2050 Email: thowell@mckigganhebert.com Website: mckigganhebert.com MacGillivray Injury and Insurance Law (NS, NB, NL, PEI) Phone: 1 888 434 0398 Email: inquire@macgillivraylaw.com Website: macgillivraylaw.com Budden Law (St. John’s, NL)

Thomson Rogers LLP (Toronto) Phone: 416 868 3100 Email: info@trlaw.com Website: trlaw.com

Correia & Collins (Saint John, NB) Wagners Law Firm (Halifax, NS)

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UPFRONT

OPINION

Legal regulation and mental health Law societies must focus on transparency and structured triage to be truly effective A LAWYER sits alone at the end of the day, staring at glowing screens.

The file remains open. The document is nearly drafted, but not quite. Sleep is fleeting.

Concentration comes and goes. The work is still getting done – but it feels heavier now.

And then the quieter thought: a drink would take the edge off. Just one. Quietly. Privately.

In this profession, that thought is not uncommon. What is rare is knowing where to turn without risking what you’ve built.

The Université de Sherbrooke’s national study – the first of its kind in Canada – found that more than half of legal professionals experience psychological distress and burnout. More than one in four reported moderate to severe depressive symptoms.

Alcohol and drug use were at levels the researchers described as worrying. For some, what begins as relief slowly becomes reliance. The shift is gradual, private, and professionally undetected – until it is not.

When distress affects judgment, organization, or reliability, it is no longer only a personal struggle. It becomes a regulatory matter.

And here, Canada’s law societies face a structural tension. Most jurisdictions now support lawyer-assistance programs, wellness hubs, peer support, and confidential counselling. In some provinces, diversion or recovery-oriented processes allow health-linked matters to be addressed without resorting to discipline.

These efforts are meaningful. But they operate alongside regulatory systems whose primary mandate is public protection – and that duality shapes how lawyers assess risk when deciding whether to seek help. Many will pursue private assistance long before engaging anything connected to their regulator. Where the consequences of disclosure are unclear,

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delay feels rational. And delay allows concerns to deepen before they surface formally.

The question is not whether regulators are investing in wellness. They are. The question is whether the regulatory interface is sufficiently clear to encourage earlier engagement, thereby protecting clients. There are practical steps law societies could adopt or harmonize, most of which involve clarity, transparency, and structured triage – refinements that require neither legislative change nor significant new funding.

Disclosure and confidentiality: Does contacting an assistance program trigger reporting? What must be self-reported? Who can access that information? A centralized FAQ would provide clarity without altering substantive obligations. Reducing uncertainty reduces avoidance.

Health information containment framework: Medical details obtained during investigations can later become known to individuals beyond those directly involved.

Even where disclosure is lawful, perception matters. Regulators could strengthen confidence by publicly describing how “needto-know” access operates – which roles may access medical information, how it is stored, and how circulation is limited.

Plain-language guide: This concise resource outlines when health concerns may prompt review, how incapacity provisions function, and what circumstances lead to intervention.

Early-intervention pathways: Several jurisdictions already use recovery-oriented processes for low-risk matters. Where such

pathways exist, making them visible reduces fear-driven delay. Where they do not, regulators could establish support-first triage options limited to circumstances without serious client harm.

Profession-specific clinical supports: Lawyers need clinicians who understand adversarial practice, billable-hour environments, vicarious trauma, and regulatory anxiety. Assistance programs could incorporate structured orientation on legal practice stressors and identify therapists familiar with legal work.

Annual reporting: Anonymized data – the number of competence matters involving health and categories of resolution – would replace assumptions with facts, reinforcing that health-linked matters are addressed proportionately.

None of these measures dilute public protection. They strengthen it. Clearer processes encourage earlier engagement.

Earlier engagement reduces the likelihood that mental health or addiction concerns will escalate into client harm.

Over five years of speaking with lawyers across Canada and the United States, one pattern has been consistent: support exists, but uncertainty persists. More than once, a lawyer has pulled me aside after a presentation – always privately, never in writing – to confide that they knew they needed help but would not risk contact with any resource connected to their law society for fear of disciplinary reprisal, or worse. Recently, it was a young lawyer at a national firm. Not out of denial. Out of an inability to know what their regulator would do with that disclosure. In uncertainty, silence felt safer than seeking help.

Clarity protects the public. And it protects the profession.

Jason Ward is a retired certified civil litigator who focuses on mental health and addiction in the legal profession. He speaks across North America on sustainability, leadership, and institutional responsibility.

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LEGAL REPORT

TECHNOLOGY

Law firms’ biggest cybersecurity missteps According to cybersecurity and legal tech experts, most law firms are ill-equipped to address modern cybersecurity risks, writes Jessica Mach ASKED TO identify some of the most pressing cybersecurity issues law firms are facing today, three cybersecurity and legal tech experts were quick to flag, for Canadian Lawyer, the ongoing frequency of incidents involving ransomware and business email compromise, or the growing sophistication of deepfakes and other risks that have emerged with new artificial intelligence tools.

At the heart of their concerns, however, were not the actions of threat actors – the individuals or entities that deploy ransomware or create fake content to deceive law firms. Rather, it was how law firms themselves are dealing with these issues, and how, in many cases, they’re falling short.

Borden Ladner Gervais LLP partner Eric Charleston, cybersecurity consultant Mazdak Araghrez, and Spellbook co-founder and CEO Scott Stevenson share the most common mistakes they believe law firms are making in protecting themselves and their clients from digital threats.

Sequestering cybersecurity in the IT department As a cyber incident and data breach lawyer, Charleston has helped law firms across Canada respond to dozens of cybersecurity breaches. Law firms are prime targets

for breaches for two reasons: they store sensitive information and they handle a lot of money.

Charleston believes that law firms’ vulnerabilities to cyber attacks often stem from the same issue: the way their governance models are structured.

“Cybersecurity is still treated by a lot of firms as an IT issue rather than a firm-wide risk management priority,” says Charleston.

“It’s sort of delegated and then not overseen.

In Charleston’s experience, few law firm leaders understand how their IT departments assess cybersecurity risks or the steps they’re taking to mitigate them. This makes it challenging for them to evaluate whether IT is providing adequate protection. For example, when IT teams present new cybersecurity measures like security upgrades or training to leaders who are tasked with approving those measures, those leaders typically make assessments “from a procure-

“Cybersecurity is still treated by a lot of firms as an IT issue rather than a firm-wide risk management priority” Eric Charleston, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP And that problem results in control gaps that should be addressed.”

Araghrez, who has served as a consultant to law firms in Europe and Canada, including Dentons, echoes Charleston’s sentiment.

“Everybody thinks cybersecurity is IT’s problem,” he says. “We need to shift that mindset away from just looking at IT being responsible … toward everybody being responsible.”

ment perspective,” Charleston says. “How much do they cost? What impediment to work will they make?”

However, understanding industry trends in security, the consequences of eschewing cybersecurity measures, and how those measures technically work is critical for leaders to ensure their firms have the right level of protection, Charleston says. In cases where leaders are up to speed, they “tend to opt for more security” than those who aren’t, he observes.

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LEGAL REPORT

TECHNOLOGY

“It’s much harder to secure your own infrastructure with your own talent versus relying heavily on … Google or …

[Amazon Web Services]” Scott Stevenson, Spellbook Araghrez, meanwhile, argues that literacy in cybersecurity risks needs to extend beyond IT departments and management to entire law firms. While firms typically require lawyers and staff to take cybersecurity training via programs and videos, “none of us really watch those videos,” he says. “People put the training video on mute and let it play.”

In his view, a more effective strategy for ensuring that lawyers and staff understand day-to-day cybersecurity risks is to use incentives. Araghrez says firms can build cybersecurity learning and development into bonus structures, for example, or provide

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incentives for identifying phishing emails that the IT department sends out every quarter to test lawyers and staff.

Insufficient protection of client data Another issue that Charleston says he’s observed is law firms failing to protect client data that’s shared with third-party vendors and tools. In his experience, this issue is more common at small and mid-sized firms, which often neglect to properly evaluate third-party service providers before agreeing to work with them.

“It works like this,” Charleston says. “You

must have a due diligence program in place where you assess their security before you hire them or sign a contract with them. You then must lock those controls and obligations into the agreement. You must make the vendor promise to be secure in certain ways and to train in certain ways and to notify you of cyber incidents or confidentiality incidents in certain ways. And that’s all got to be in the contract.”

Even when firms follow all these steps, many fall short of taking one last, crucial measure: auditing service providers.

“You have to say, ‘You promised this to us, prove that you are actually doing it,’” Charleston says. “That can happen on an annual basis if you’re revisiting procurement on an annual basis with these vendors, but it should occur on some sort of a regular cadence.”

Such due diligence has become increasingly important as more businesses share data with third-party vendors as part of their operations. Many law firms use external cloud platforms, for example, to which they share information on an ongoing basis or share information in relation to discrete mandates. Because such sharing has become more common, “we are seeing … a high percentage of incidents occurring where our clients are not being directly attacked, or they are not having their systems subject to unauthorized access, but rather they are getting notifications from a vendor that they share information with that the vendor has been hit,” Charleston says.

Charleston notes that, in such scenarios, the law firm, not the third party, remains accountable for the data. “I am accountable to the client that I took the information from,” he says.

Stevenson, who says Spellbook’s clients include, but are not limited to, large, small, and mid-sized firms and in-house teams, flags another way firms might be compromising the security of client data.

“There’s a surprising number of law firms that still believe that running on-premise servers and maintaining software even in

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Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. If a sole practitioner in Canada uses Spellbook, for example, they will benefit from the same security measures “as a massive hospital network in the US … handling patient data,” Stevenson says.

Lack of collaboration between firms

“The only way that the legal profession can protect itself is by coming together and being on the same team rather than playing against each other” Mazdak Araghrez, cybersecurity consultant their own cloud is going to be a more secure way to protect their client data,” Stevenson says. “I think it’s a terrible idea.”

He explains his argument in non-technical terms: imagine you’re living in a condo building, and argue that everyone is more secure if they each manage their own security rather than having a single security system for the entire building.

“Securing any application is very difficult.

There’s millions and millions of lines of code, many interaction points. The amount of effort it takes to monitor and do penetration testing and to secure a lot of applications generally is enormous,” Stevenson says. Smaller IT teams lack the capacity and resources to “deeply monitor and secure applications and also just … stay on top of constant patching,” he says.

“It’s much harder to secure your own infrastructure with your own talent versus relying heavily on the talent of Google or the talent of [Amazon Web Services],” he adds. “In the case of Spellbook … we have a dedicated team of engineers that is securing and monitoring that platform 24-7, every hour of the day.”

Stevenson also notes that larger service providers often have more robust security measures because their clients demand it. Large financial institutions won’t take on third-party service providers unless they meet rigorous security requirements; companies with European Union customers or clients must work with vendors that meet General Data Protection Regulation standards; US healthcare providers must use services that comply with the Health

In Araghrez’s experience, one fact that many law firms tend to overlook is how their own cybersecurity is only as good as that of the firms they work with. “We are interconnected,” he says. “Dentons will always work with opposing counsel. The opposing counsel may be from a small or a medium-sized firm.

“If the weakest link in that chain is a smaller law firm which hasn’t got the right cybersecurity protections in place, it opens up the threat profile to everybody in that chain.”

To address this issue, Araghrez recently co-launched The Sentinel Project, an initiative to build a free, open cybersecurity framework for the legal sector.

“Effectively, what we’re trying to say is, let’s all come together as law firms, as associations, as thought leaders in this space, and develop a platform that is open source, that is free, built by law firms, for law firms, globally,” Araghrez says. “That platform effectively is going to help all organizations of all sizes protect themselves.”

Araghrez describes the project as a library that will give firms of all sizes access to guidance on improving their cybersecurity. For example, a small firm that wants to obtain certification under a cybersecurity compliance standard like SOC 2 within, say, six months can plug those parameters into the Sentinel platform and access training.

“The only way that the legal profession can protect itself is by coming together and being on the same team rather than playing against each other,” he says. “Because no, there’s not going to be a single winner when it comes to cybersecurity. We all are interconnected; we work with the same vendors, we work on the same matters, and if one of us gets breached, then that exposes all of us to that.”

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UPFRONT

OPINION

AI risks hollowing out apprenticeship model As I enter the profession, my generation could have the most powerful legal tools in history, with no ability to assess when to trust them ON MY first morning as a summer intern at a Toronto Bay Street firm, I stepped into the elevator at Bay Adelaide Centre and saw a laminated sign below the floor buttons: “The use of artificial intelligence tools for client matters is strictly prohibited.” This message was on every floor, in every elevator bank. And the prohibition was right: the Law Society of Ontario’s April 2024 white paper confirmed that duties of competence and confidentiality apply in full to AI.

to do with the law. We are not asking whether AI will take our jobs. Rather, we are asking whether the apprenticeship will make us competent enough to keep them.

Every lawyer I admire says the same thing: legal training does not end with law school; it begins there. The classroom teaches doctrine, but the practice teaches judgment. You learn to advise a frightened client by watching a senior lawyer do it first and then doing it yourself, badly, and then

Reviewing a contract AI has already flagged is a fundamentally different cognitive act from reviewing one cold But Abraham Lincoln’s law practice was limited by the number of books he could fit on his horse cart. Every transformation in legal information, from the printing press to Westlaw, has remade the profession. As University of Toronto law professor Benjamin Alarie has argued, AI is the next such transformation, and every law student should be learning to use it. The elevator signs will come down. The harder question is whether firms can train lawyers to use AI without hollowing out the apprenticeship that teaches them to think without it.

I am graduating this spring. So are 4,000 other students from Canada’s 24 accredited law schools. Some of us financed three years of tuition through OSAP. Some through family. Some worked jobs that had nothing

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doing it again. Every serious legal system institutionalizes this apprenticeship. Canada calls it articling; Germany, the Referendariat; and England requires two years of qualifying work experience. Competence is built through supervised repetition.

The question is: what happens when those repetitions disappear? A&O Shearman deployed Harvey AI across its 3,500 lawyers.

Thomson Reuters reported that AI adoption among legal organizations nearly doubled in a single year. Goldman Sachs estimated that 44 percent of legal tasks could be automated, the highest exposure among the professions surveyed. Legal judgment is built through repetition of exactly the tasks large language models do best: due diligence memos, contract review, and case-law summaries.

Reviewing a contract AI has already flagged is a fundamentally different cognitive act from reviewing one cold. The first tests recognition; the second builds it. Westlaw changed how lawyers find cases, but they still must read them and reach their own conclusion. AI proposes the conclusion for you.

Let me be direct: articling students should be using AI as much as possible. This is a paradigm shift. AI can coach you through a memo, flag the errors you made on your last analysis, and surface patterns across a thousand documents no human could hold in working memory. The senior partner of 2036 will not resemble the senior partner of today, and training articling students as though she will is, respectfully, a mistake. I remember watching taxi drivers protest Uber at Nathan Phillips Square, convinced the medallion would hold its value. It did not. But the drivers who learned the new platform are still driving.

The ones who fought the technology are not.

Law firms are businesses, and AI improves margins. No managing partner will apologize for that, and none should have to. Whether AI eventually reshapes the economics of the leveraged firm itself is still an open question.

But law firms are also the only institution in this country that trains lawyers. There is no residency program, no alternative pipeline.

The firm is the teaching hospital. I know this sounds idealistic. I also know that every senior lawyer reading this was trained by someone who believed the same thing.

The elevator signs will come down.

What replaces them cannot be the existing articling playbook with AI tacked on. It must be training that makes AI fluency a core competency from day one while ensuring that junior lawyers still do the unassisted analytical work through which judgment is built. I am writing this now because by the time my generation has the seniority to design that training, the apprenticeship that would have prepared us to design it well may no longer exist.

Arjun Gupta is a JD Candidate 2026 at the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law. You can see some of his work at www.arjungupta.com.

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FEATURE

INHOUSE INTERVIEWS

Best of in-house interviews Our sister publication, Lexpert, profiles in-house counsel regularly online at lexpert.ca/news/in-house-lawyer.

Below is a selection of profiles featured by Lexpert this year

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FEATURE

INHOUSE INTERVIEWS

JENNIFER LAU Company: TELUS Title: Senior counsel, M&A/TELUS global ventures Leading on risk, innovation, and billiondollar deals “Taking calculated risks is where growth comes,” Jennifer Lau says. That willingness to

JOHN MURRAY Company: Slate Asset Management Title: Managing director, legal A European expansion and shift from offices into grocery, logistics, and energy Essential real estate and infrastructure have become a core focus for investors seeking defensive, resilient assets, according to John Murray, and that shift is reshaping how capital, deals, and legal advice are structured across borders. In his role as managing director, legal at Slate Asset Management, a global investment and asset management firm focused on essential real estate and infrastructure, he sees every day how assets tied to groceries, logistics, health, and energy hold up when markets turn and investors become nervous.

Murray traces the strategy back well before the pandemic, but he says COVID made the market finally catch up to a thesis Slate had been building for more

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step outside her comfort zone has defined her career, from moving to Brazil to practise law to embracing high-stakes complex transactions at TELUS. For Lau, her legal career isn’t about staying in a prescribed lane – it’s about asking, “What will make my career flourish, and what will make me satisfied and happy with the career decisions I’ve made?” and then having “the willingness to jump in and embrace or create those opportunities,” she says.

Lau’s appetite for risk has shaped her approach at TELUS, where she leads major transactions across business units. She joined

TELUS’ wireless tower infrastructure. “We made an announcement at the beginning of August about the creation of Terrion: we are carving

out TELUS’ passive wireless infrastructure business as a stand-alone entity and have created Canada’s largest dedicated wireless tower operator in partnership with La Caisse,” she says. The deal closed on September 10, 2025.

Her track record extends beyond this most recent deal. Lau led the legal team on TELUS Health’s approximately $500 million acquisition of Workplace Options, as well as TELUS’ acquisition of Vivint Security Canada for $123 million.

Early in her career, she had represented YM BioSciences in its $510 million acquisition by Gilead Sciences. She then drove the restructuring of Lupatech Group’s $300 million cross-border debt – a transaction that won the Global M&A Network’s Energy & Services Turnaround of the Year Award. At Barrick, she supported the $6.5 billion merger with Randgold Resources and a joint venture with Newmont that resolved an $18 billion hostile takeover.

than a decade. During the crisis, he watched the phrase “essential workers” appear on the front page of newspapers every day, and the same lens quickly applied to property. As he puts it, “COVID was... a huge inflection point for a lot of people, and it really brought what is deemed essential to the forefront.” That clarity reinforced Slate’s view that assets enabling the distribution of vital goods and services are inherently defensive and should command serious long-term capital.

In addition to its footprint in Canada and the US, that strategy has pushed the firm deep into Europe, transforming what began as a German beachhead into a broader Western European platform. Murray has been closely involved in this build-out, not as a local-law specialist but as the Canadian generalist who knows how to frame risk and structure commercial priorities across jurisdictions.

Looking ahead, Murray expects those decisions to continue favouring Europe as tariff disputes and political uncertainty steer capital flows. At the same time, he

notes pressure in Canada to build more renewable power, data centres, and other energy-intensive infrastructure at home, which aligns with Slate’s focus on essential real estate and infrastructure tied to everyday needs.

as senior counsel, M&A/TELUS global ventures in 2022 after working in-house at Barrick Gold Corporation and practising corporate law at Shearman & Sterling in Brazil.

Lau was at the centre of a $1.2 billion carveout transaction and joint venture involving

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MICHÈLE LEFAIVRE Company: La Caisse (Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) Title: Première directrice, affaires juridiques, actifs réels, crédit et actions Scaling assets while staying lean: how judgment, communication, and AI skills will propel the team At a firm managing nearly half a trillion in assets, growth is no longer measured in headcount. Michèle Lefaivre, who leads a team of 30 lawyers at the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec covering all asset classes, knows this reality intimately. All indicators point to exponential growth in the years ahead. Since headcount won’t grow at the same rate as assets, this creates an opportunity for innovation within the legal team.

Managing regulatory change requires a balanced perspective. The landscape looks chaotic from the outside – ESG, sustainabil-

HARRY GOUSOPOULOS Company: Tribunals Ontario Title: Executive director

ity standards, and regulatory shifts are arriving constantly. However, Lefaivre cautions against a purely reactive approach: “The discourse around these different elements... has changed a little bit, but the actual regulatory landscape may not necessarily be changing as quickly,” she says. Her team’s sophistication – comprising regulatory specialists across all divisions as well as a dedicated global affairs group – helps separate signal from noise. Quick adaptation matters, but so does factual analysis.

The real inflection point isn’t regulatory, though. It’s technology. Lefaivre spends considerable time thinking about AI integration. La Caisse is piloting tools across the legal department, and the results are catching the attention of key stakeholders. One advantage of running a larger legal department is the ability to experiment responsibly, but Lefaivre is also mindful of avoiding suffocation in bureaucracy.

“We have a strong focus on agility and being able to try stuff without making it unnecessarily administrative because there is a question of time here,” she says.

For her investment lawyers specifically, AI unlocks something beyond efficiency. The department has a decade of market data and deal history. Accessing it in real time across the entire dataset could shift how the organization positions itself. “The full breadth of what we have is going to unlock not only efficiencies but also consistency and moving certain things forward,” she says.

Driving digital transformation and cutting tribunal backlogs Decisions in administrative law significantly impact people’s lives, and the speed of tribunal cases gives lawyers a rare chance to see the full arc of a matter. That’s the core appeal of government legal work, according to Harry Gousopoulos. “Government is a great place to work as a lawyer… Typically cases before administrative tribunals move much more quickly from start to finish than in civil litigation, so you get the chance to see a lot more from start to finish,” he says.

As executive director, Gousopoulos is overseeing Tribunals Ontario’s digital overhaul. “We’ve overseen a fundamental transformation of our tribunals from an in-person, paper-based approach to a digital-first model with hearings conducted by video by default,” he says. Most users support virtual hearings, but Gousopoulos insists on accessibility. “We have to make sure that we’re providing alternatives

and supports so all of our users can fully participate,” he says. The organization rolled out computer-access terminals, a mobile terminal program, and a phone program to ensure no one is left behind.

Backlogs at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) and Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) are the main focus. When Gousopoulos joined in 2020, four tribunals faced entrenched backlogs. Now, 10 out of 12 are not only meeting but often surpassing service standards. The License Appeal Tribunal and Social Benefits Tribunal have cleared their backlogs entirely, leaving only the LTB and HRTO with outstanding issues.

At the HRTO, mandatory mediation is now standard, aiming to resolve more cases early and free up resources for hearings. “Our experience with mediation is that over half of them will resolve at an early stage,” he says.

For Gousopoulos, speed is non-negotiable: he’s focused on tearing down barriers and accelerating resolutions, and won’t consider his work finished until the backlogs are gone.

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FEATURE

INHOUSE INTERVIEWS

KOSTA STAROSTIN Company: Cohere Title: Vice president, legal Steering legal at Canada’s sole foundational LLM artificial intelligence firm

SAMSON CHAN Company: London Drugs Title: General counsel A career spanning science, privacy law, and becoming a business partner at a retail leader Excellence isn’t optional in law – it’s the baseline, says Samson Chan, newly named general counsel at London Drugs. He pushes junior lawyers to be intentional about their choices, urging them to chart their paths with purpose and avoid drifting through their early years. “Excellence matters, no matter where you go and what path you choose. And have some urgency. It’s good to know what you want earlier and not waste time,” he says.

Now at the helm of the day-to-day legal at the company, reporting directly to the executives, including the chief legal officer, Chan calls this year transformational but insists that job titles don’t define him. “I’ve

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Artificial intelligence in Canada is being driven by business ambition, regulatory uncertainty, and a demand for technological sovereignty. Inside Cohere, the country’s leading foundational model developer, legal and business stakes are climbing as quickly as the technology itself.

Canadian companies, governments, and international partners want alternatives to US-based AI providers, and Cohere is the only Canadian player at this scale. “There’s really been an impetus for Canadian companies, governments, as well as companies internationally, like in the UK and Europe, to look outside the US for partners in this space,” says Kosta Starostin, general counsel at Cohere. While many now build with AI, few foundational LLM companies exist – Cohere stands alone in Canada.

For enterprise customers, legal risk comes first. “The biggest issue for many executives who want to adopt this technology inside their organizations is figuring out how to futureproof it for the business, because it is a very intricate and novel technology in a rapidly

evolving landscape,” Starostin says. Business leaders face a steep learning curve; education starts with what a foundational model does, what it can and cannot do, and what it takes to move from proof of concept to ROI. Technical hurdles are steep. For business owners, implementing this technology means committing serious time, resources, and skilled engineering. Integrating large language models into existing systems and ensuring performance takes expertise. Early adopters must justify major investments to their boards without any guarantee of success.

Cohere targets enterprise, not consumer chatbots, developing AI to automate business workflows and embed advanced models into client products. That focus doesn’t shield the company from legal and regulatory scrutiny. “Those decision-making points are also underpinned by legal and regulatory concerns because … the compliance teams, the security teams are going to ask a lot of questions,” he says. Data security, privacy, and training data provenance are all under the microscope.

never defined myself by my positions and titles – rather, it’s what I can create, provide, and deliver that matters the most to me. Still the same person just under a new title,” he wrote in his announcement on LinkedIn. He credits a long list of mentors and colleagues for his growth and signals that the work ahead is what matters most.

Chan’s leadership is rooted in collaboration and a willingness to take calculated risks. He’s quick to point out that in-house law isn’t for everyone. The job demands a shift in mindset from private practice – lawyers must accept that business involves risk and uncertainty, and not every problem can be solved by playing it completely safe and searching for absolute certainty.

Regulation, particularly in the areas of privacy and technology, remains a persistent challenge. Chan says the law rarely keeps pace with business innovation, especially with the rise of AI and new technologies.

His multicultural background shapes his approach to both law and business. Chan

blends Eastern and Western business styles, seeing value in both relationship-driven and contract-driven models. He draws on generational, long-term thinking from his Chinese heritage and pairs it with the fastpaced, innovative mindset of Western business.

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DAVID SNARCH Company: MDA Space Title: General counsel, vice president & corporate secretary The legal strategy behind satellites, classified programs, and international contracts

ADRIAN LANG Company: Staples Canada Title: Chief people and legal officer Expanding the team, streamlining contracts, and managing CEO transitions for sustained growth Cost savings and business transformation have defined Staples Canada’s legal and HR functions since 2021, with Adrian Lang a central part of the change. She didn’t hesitate to expand her legal department soon after she took on the role, moving from a team of one to five. “I was able to demonstrate significant immediate cost savings by building an internal team, which is the point of having a captive in-house team – it should save you legal costs, and it did,” she says.

Staples’ transformation, which began after its 2017 acquisition by Sycamore Partners, continues to accelerate. The company’s B2B business has surged, with Lang overseeing a string of acquisitions.

As general counsel of MDA Space, David Snarch sits at the centre of a global space business that designs and launches satellites, delivers services from space and in-orbit, runs classified programs, and sells complex systems to governments and commercial customers who expect zero surprises. He is responsible for legal, contracts, and regulatory compliance matters in a business built on advanced space technology, rather than a commodity product.

“MDA Space, as a space company, operates in a fairly highly regulated sector, given the sensitive nature of our systems, products, and various operations,” he says, and being public “adds a layer of regulatory oversight on the company.”

Those pressures can manifest in crossborder work, where certain information or solutions cannot move without government approval.

“We have customers internationally,” he says, and “certain systems and products that we develop and export to different jurisdictions require export licenses, which can

With three CEOs over the past four years, Lang’s focus has been on maintaining stability. “From my perspective as chief legal officer, my role during these transitions is to offer continuity and support – not just to the incoming and outgoing CEOs but also to the broader leadership team,” she explains.

Lang has also pushed for technological change, ditching what she calls “a very expensive document repository” for an AI-powered contract management platform.

For in-house counsel, she says, the big worry is “the contracts, what we don’t know, what’s lurking either that legal never saw or things so far back that no one in the current business knows.”

Privacy and cyber risk are at the forefront. “It really is an ever-changing area from a regulatory perspective, particularly in Quebec,” she says.

“One of the key jobs is to just stay ahead of what the requirements are, what’s coming, are we changing quickly enough, are we compliant?”

Lang’s portfolio expanded again when she assumed the role of chief human resources

be quite complex.” At the same time, parts of the business are highly classified, so his team must ensure that the appropriate clearances are obtained, Snarch adds.

As with many global businesses, anti-corruption risk is another persistent area of focus. MDA does business in many different countries and often relies on distributors or third-party representatives, which requires a fairly comprehensive third-party due diligence program to ensure that the company understands with whom they are doing business and that they operate with a level of business ethics that they can trust.

That kind of regulatory complexity suits a lawyer who cut his teeth in high-velocity deal work. Snarch’s comfort in a fast-paced environment stems from a transaction-heavy start in private practice at Lawson Lundell LLP in Vancouver, where he worked in the corporate finance and M&A group and handled every transaction he could. In the early part of his career, he sought to experience it all, including IPOs, reverse takeovers, and private equity investments.

officer. The role had connections to her original legal mandate. “We see overlap on our employee issues that we tackle in legal,” she says.

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FEATURE

INHOUSE INTERVIEWS RAHIM ESMAIL Company: TELUS Title: Associate general counsel, TELUS agriculture & consumer goods Why this vibe-coding AI project at TELUS exemplifies the future of legal services At TELUS, the work started with a concrete problem: a complex portfolio of contracts and a legal team that needed real insight, not just faster summaries. Instead of throwing more junior lawyers at the work, Rahim Esmail stayed up late developing an AI-powered software application designed to apply senior-level legal reasoning at scale. He then put that tool, now known as the Document Analyzer, into his colleagues’ hands.

Esmail, who is associate general counsel and co-chair of TELUS’s AI Think Tank, was “vibe coding,” using a new wave of AI tools to build software without writing traditional code. The process uses natural-language

JILL DALEY Company: Eli Lilly Canada Inc. Title: General counsel and VP, corporate affairs Championing pharmaceutical sector transformation

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instructions and AI coding tools to assemble working software without a computer science background, enabling people with no coding experience to design applications tailored to their specific needs. Because these tools have removed barriers to software development, Esmail predicts that early adopters in the legal industry will start moving away from one-sizefits-all, expensive SaaS platforms toward highly specific, custom-developed tools.

“On a one-off basis, LLMs are at the point where a user could upload a document, ask a question, and get the output needed,” says Esmail, but that still meant prompts, re-prompts, and manual checks, all on a small-batch basis.

The Document Analyzer is his answer to that bottleneck. The app ingests large folders of unstructured files, strips out the text, and feeds it into a large language model using company standards and prompts tuned to the issues that matter to TELUS. It then compiles the answers into a table that shows relationships between documents, flags issues, and sets out the key fields the business

needs to track. A legal team that once had to choose between superficial sampling and unaffordable full-scale review can now see the whole landscape and decide where to act.

Canada’s pharmaceutical sector is at a crossroads, says Jill Daley, vice president of corporate affairs and general counsel at Eli Lilly Canada. “The time is now to make change, [to ensure] Canada remains competitive and we are in an... innovation economy,” she says.

Daley’s role places her at the intersection of economics, innovation, and health – a vantage point she calls “extraordinary.”

Initially general counsel, she handled legal and policy matters such as Patented Medicine Prices Review Board work and pharmacare.

Three years ago, she expanded her remit to include corporate affairs – advocacy, policy, government relations, and communications.

“Some of that is a bit of a stretch assignment... but all somewhat related to the work that we do as lawyers,” she says. Now, she leads both legal and corporate affairs teams through complex regulatory and commercial challenges.

The legal environment for pharmaceutical innovation is evolving rapidly. Daley sees an urgent need for reforms in how medicines are reviewed and valued in Canada. “That’s

ensuring that the way in which medicines are reviewed at Health Canada remains competitive internationally,” she says.

Her team’s work is shaped by the realities of a post-COVID world and increased government scrutiny. “The pharmaceutical industry has been of interest to our government and governments around the world.” She notes a gap in Canada’s domestic ecosystem for innovative pharmaceuticals and life sciences – a gap that has drawn more attention since both Canada and the US elected new governments.

Daley approaches external counsel pragmatically, focusing on high-risk and unfamiliar areas such as patient privacy and novel business practices. She values candid and proactive legal partners, especially those who share industry-wide insights and flag emerging risks early.

Internally, Daley’s pharmaceutical background lends credibility. “It’s having a familiarity with that business channel, so that we are speaking with the same nomenclature,” she says.

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ANDREA FELLOWS Company: Amica Senior Lifestyles Title: Senior vice president, general counsel

JENNIFER MANNING Company: BCI Title: Director & senior counsel Tackling the legal frontier of infrastructure and energy at a BC pension fund Innovation in infrastructure and energy is no longer optional for institutional investors; it sits at the centre of how they protect beneficiaries’ futures, Jennifer Manning says. That pressure to evolve is reshaping the legal questions she tackles and the way she approaches her role.

Manning now works at the junction of capital, infrastructure, and technology as director and senior counsel at British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) in Vancouver. Her path runs through big-firm project finance, public-sector procurement, and a cleantech

Navigating demographic shifts, new laws, and major deals in the senior living sector A seismic shift is underway in the senior living sector. According to Andrea Fellows, the first-ever general counsel at Amica Senior Lifestyles, legal and business strategies are evolving fast to meet the demands of a new generation of residents and a rapidly changing regulatory landscape.

“We’re delivering high-quality experiences and housing and taking care of seniors and letting them live their best possible lives,” she says. After nine years at Oxford, Fellows was approached to become Amica’s general counsel, building a legal function from scratch at a large organization that had never had an in-house lawyer. Fellows saw a chance to overhaul a reactive legal culture and push the organization to think ahead.

Joint ventures and development deals demand close collaboration with many stakeholders. “I’ve also gotten the opportunity to work with partners and lenders and construction managers and developers to

sew it all together and bring something… that starts with assembling a few houses into what is ultimately developed into a new newly built, fully operational Amica,” she says.

Demographic shifts are forcing Amica to rethink its entire approach. The boomer generation is entering senior living with different expectations than previous generations. “They have different expectations and wants, in terms of service and in terms of how they want to live and spend their time in one of our residences,” she says. The company must evolve to meet these demands while also navigating regulatory changes, tariffs, and supply chain issues.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion shape how Fellows leads. At Amica, she attacks the issue on two fronts: building a workforce where everyone is seen and heard and tackling the tougher job of educating residents who have never experienced modern ED&I initiatives.

“There’s a different level of education that we’re offering to our residents, which is also something that I find fascinating,” she says.

start-up, and she says lawyers chasing predictability are not suited to this area.

She focuses on infrastructure and energy investments and sits on the boards of a district energy business and a social infrastructure company. “One of the best parts of the job is that it’s a great mix,” she says. “You work, day to day, on asset management matters, which means I’ll be answering legal questions from the business teams on assets spanning multiple sectors and jurisdictions.

BCI uses external counsel on major cross-border deals, but Manning is clear that in-house lawyers cannot outsource judgment: “You are expected to be knee deep in the deal and be able to answer questions to your business teams all the time,” she says. Her board roles reinforce that expectation, where she sits on “as an investor, not as a lawyer.”

Technology is another pressure point where she is pushing both herself and her advisers to adapt. Internally, she says, “we are

actively encouraged to be thinking about, for example, how AI can create efficiencies within our own roles and continue to add value.

Maintaining, of course, all of the legal and ethical challenges that it brings.”

On the investment side, she is watching the growth of data centres and the strain that artificial intelligence is putting on infrastructure systems.

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FEATURE

INHOUSE INTERVIEWS Bringing a regulator lens to TD’s wealth and insurance group Jennifer Armstrong recently joined TD Bank Group as general counsel for wealth and insurance, taking charge of legal support for two businesses the bank sees as central to its future. She describes these areas as a strategic focus for TD as the bank works to stay connected to clients while vast sums of assets move between generations, and fintech challengers compete for those relationships.

The intergenerational transfer of wealth is already reshaping who controls financial assets, and Armstrong argues that incumbents cannot assume relationships will automatically pass from grandparents to parents and grandchildren just because legacy accounts sit on their balance sheets.

JENNIFER ARMSTRONG Company: TD Bank Group Title: General counsel, wealth and insurance

PUJA KUMAR Company: Sagard Title: Partner, deputy general counsel & assistant secretary Leveraging legal tech to secure the Law Department Innovation Award Sagard’s legal department clinched the Law Department Innovation Award at the 2025 Canadian Law Awards for its bold approach to legal tech and process transformation – a recognition that signals a shift in what it means to deliver value as an in-house legal team. “We were recognized not as gatekeepers but, rather, value-added business partners,” says Puja Kumar, deputy general counsel and assistant secretary at Sagard.

The accolade caps a remarkable trajectory: Sagard has grown from managing US$500 million in assets in 2016 to more than $32 billion in assets under management in 2025. Keeping pace with that

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into a single national self-regulatory body in January 2023. That project forced her team to confront overlapping rulebooks and systems, as well as clashing institutional cultures and employee expectations, reinforcing her view that the real test of any major deal begins after the transaction closes, not when the documents are signed.

“It’s a journey, regardless of how clean the actual coming together of the two parties is,” she says. Once CIRO was created, Armstrong had to knit together legal and compliance functions, public affairs, and corporate communications, while also running government relations and, for a time, risk management.

Her regulatory experience also shapes

She arrives at TD straight from the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization, where she spent five years as general counsel and corporate secretary, including leading the amalgamation of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada

how she envisions lawyers interacting with oversight bodies in a highly regulated sector, and she argues that transparency is the core principle for effective relationships with regulators, while trying to hide problems or delay engagement only makes matters worse. “It’s okay to pick up the phone or send an email and reach out to the regulator,” she says.

growth demanded a legal function that could scale just as quickly.

When Kumar joined Sagard, the legal team faced a core challenge: how to optimize processes in step with the firm’s explosive growth.

“You need to find ways to make things scalable.

Otherwise, you’re just creating an in-house mini law firm,” she says. The answer was a relentless focus on process optimization and technology adoption, culminating in the development of in-house digital platforms that have slashed turnaround times and delivered measurable savings.

At the forefront is the Sagard Marketing Assurance Review Tool (SMART), an AI-powered platform that transformed the firm’s marketing compliance review process.

What once took up three days and cost thousands in external counsel fees is now routinely completed within 24 hours – with annual savings exceeding US$250,000.

Despite Sagard’s enthusiasm, Kumar is clear-eyed about the challenges. Change management remains a hurdle, with adoption varying across the organization. “We have cat-

egories of users – there are the super-users that are using it for every single workflow, the middle-of-the-road users, and those where old habits take time to change,” she says.

The solution is to train and foster a culture of experimentation through team-wide “show and tell” sessions where members present creative solutions to challenges.

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LEGAL REPORT

REAL ESTATE

The complexities of building more homes Property development lawyers say new funding announcements and tax reductions are helping spur housing, but more needs to be done GOVERNMENTS IN Ottawa and provincial capitals insist they want to build faster and hit ambitious housing targets.

But lawyers in real estate and infrastructure say the legal framework still pushes in two directions at once, as local politics, entrenched fee structures, and overlapping rules often blunt the impact of new incentives and funding.

“About a third of the cost of developing, building, and selling a house is taxes and fees,” says William Liske, vice president and general counsel at Losani Group, which builds homes in Southern Ontario.

“That has to change, because it’s way too costly to manufacture, build, and sell a house when a third of what you’re paying is government fees.”

“It’s way too costly to manufacture, build, and sell a house when a third of what you’re paying is government fees” William Liske, Losani Group For Liske, the central problem is who controls land use decisions and how much those decisions cost builders to navigate.

Federal and provincial tweaks to HST and development charges have chipped away at the margins, he says, while leaving the most expensive and unpredictable layers intact at the municipal level.

He breaks Ontario’s tax regime into three pillars. First is the longstanding

GST/HST new housing rebate. It was introduced when “homes were cheap, and the government never increased the threshold,” he says, so it now maxes out far below current prices. Second is the rental housing framework, where development charge credits of 15 to 25 percent per unit offer some relief for purpose-built rental projects. Third is the new HST holiday for first-time buyers.

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LEGAL REPORT

REAL ESTATE

In practice, the combined impact on his buyers is limited. In his markets, fewer than 10 percent of purchasers qualify as first-time buyers, so “90 percent or more of the home buyers are seeing no benefit at all to the government incentives right now,” he says, while every buyer still shoulders significant embedded HST. His prescription is blunt: expand the full HST holiday to all buyers, with a cap at $1 million to keep the focus on attainable homes rather than luxury products.

He argues that expansion would address only part of the legal and financial friction in the system. For example, development charges have climbed to more than $100,000 per unit in Hamilton, before parkland and other fees, and those costs sit on top of the risks associated with hostile municipal approvals. “Eighty-three per cent of our approvals are from the [Ontario Land Tribunal] now,” he says. “We can’t build, we can’t expand, and we can’t contract either,” when councils elected on anti-development platforms block both greenfield expansion and infill intensification.

Liske’s solution is radical by Canadian municipal standards: pull some housing

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approvals away from local councillors entirely. “There has to be a way of putting decision-making for land use, planning, and home building in the hands of independent, neutral, and trained adjudicators,” he says, rather than politicians whose voter base “is diametrically opposed to facilitating housing.”

Where Liske points to structural resistance inside the system, Ottawa real estate lawyer Mitchell Leitman focuses on affordability measures that have backfired. In his practice at Rasmussen Starr Ruddy LLP,

he sees the fallout from vacant-unit taxes, underused-housing levies, and nonresident speculation taxes that were pitched as affordability tools but often become administrative headaches.

Vacant-unit taxes in cities like Ottawa were meant to force owners to put homes back into circulation, yet Leitman says the policy logic does not align with how most landlords behave. “It’s rare that people sit on homes and don’t make them available,” he says, pointing to situations like land assemblies, where owners expect

THE ‘CARROT’ INCENTIVES Federal government: Build Canada Homes, and the $6 billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund provide a new federal builder and long-term infrastructure money to support affordable housing enabling projects nationwide.

Ontario: The March 30, 2026, Canada Ontario Partnership to Build puts $8.8 billion into housing-related infrastructure, pairs it with an HST rebate on new homes, and ties other provincial funds to municipalities that hit housing targets.

British Columbia: Under its “Homes for People” plan, BC couples mandatory small‑scale multi‑unit and transit‑oriented zoning with provincial funding and new development‑finance tools so municipalities can update bylaws, improve approvals, and build the infrastructure needed for more homes.

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to demolish buildings and are penalized anyway. The same disconnect appears in the non-resident speculation tax, which adds 25 percent to land transfer tax in Ontario for many foreign buyers; he recounts American clients who “gladly paid” the levy on a modest cottage, which he calls “another example of actions that did not necessarily translate to the outcomes that they’re hoping for.”

Dentons infrastructure and PPP partner Ethan Sinclair sees the shift away from purely punitive measures and toward direct federal and provincial spending as promising. The big story is the arrival of new funding bodies and legal vehicles that aim to address bottlenecks in enabling infrastructure rather than just tweaking the tax treatment of individual projects.

are wrestling with new capital structures and procurement rules that come with that money. Those rules include “Buy Canadian” requirements for steel, wood, and aluminum that affect procurement for large infrastructure- and housing-related projects. Compliance has become a live legal issue for both authorities drafting RFPs and contractors seeking to avoid falling offside when sourcing and documenting their supply chains.

Even with new financing and procurement tools, Sinclair says the familiar municipal chokepoints still matter most for approvals. Zoning, development approvals, and building permits remain the main drag on getting shovels in the ground, with timelines that vary widely by municipality.

Provinces have started to intervene directly

“The financial constraints around development, both for housing … [and] enabling infrastructure needed to allow for housing builds, have been a serious hindrance” Ethan Sinclair, Dentons Canada LLP He points to the Canada Infrastructure Bank’s infrastructure for housing initiative and the federal Build Canada Homes initiative, which together provide financing for water, wastewater, utilities, roads, and transit that must be in place before new housing can be built, while also engaging in direct building on federal lands, opening new sources of capital, and committing billions to affordable housing.

“The financial constraints around development, both for housing specifically but also for the enabling infrastructure needed to allow for housing builds, have been a serious hindrance. What we are seeing and navigating now are new sources of funds,” Sinclair says, and clients

– British Columbia’s municipal housing target program is a recent example – but he says the larger need is “a consistent and harmonized approach for municipalities” so builders can plan with some confidence across jurisdictions.

Vancouver development lawyer Alex Fane is watching the BC experiment and says the province has forced municipalities to confront their role in the crisis. After “years of governments imposing additional taxes and restrictions on housing,” he says, the new transit-oriented development mandates and housing targets show the province is trying to tackle local nimbyism head-on.

That does not mean projects all come to fruition. Fane says the combination of

THE ‘STICK’ TAXES Vacant home taxes: municipal surtaxes on homes left empty Underused housing tax: tax on certain underused residential properties Non resident speculation tax: land transfer surtax on foreign buyers

construction costs, heavy municipal fees, higher interest rates, and restrictions on foreign capital has pushed many projects to the sidelines. Even where additional density is legally available under provincial law, “there’s only so much that the province can do,” he says, because municipalities still control rezonings, extract the fees, and run the public processes that determine whether any given site moves ahead.

Fane argues that access to foreign capital remains “one of the more important” factors if governments want private builders to launch large projects again, because offshore pre-sale buyers historically underwrote a share of multifamily development. At the same time, he says policymakers need to be more honest about how their own requirements drive up hard costs. Environmental standards, amenity contributions, and development cost charges all have policy rationales, but “those increase costs,” he says, and if they are not re-examined, affordability targets will remain out of reach.

Across these perspectives, a pattern emerges: the legal tools Ottawa and the provinces are deploying to hit housing targets now reach into financing structures, infrastructure procurement, tax design, and municipal governance more deeply than the blunt instruments of a decade ago.

Each layer brings its own conditions, frictions, and unintended consequences.

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Canadian LAW AWARDS 2026

MAY 5, 2026 • METRO TORONTO CONVENTION CENTRE

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AWARD SPONSORS

SOCIAL MEDIA SPONSOR

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OFFICIAL JEWELLERY PARTNER

OFFICIAL BALLOT ACCOUNTANTS

EXPERIENCE SPONSOR

ACCOMMODATION PARTNER

30-Apr-2026 4:10:37 PM

A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR After Lexpert and Canadian Lawyer celebrated excellence across the legal profession at this year’s Canadian Law Awards, it is worth reflecting on how much has shifted over the past year.

From continued global uncertainty to evolving regulatory landscapes and rising expectations of accountability, Canada’s legal community has been navigating a period defined by complexity and constant change. Across firms, in-house teams, and institutions, the work has only become more critical.

These conditions have deepened our respect for the role the legal profession plays in shaping business, policy, and society. On May 5, we came together once again to recognize the individuals, deals, cases, initiatives, law firms, and in-house departments setting the standard for what leadership in law looks like today.

Congratulations to this year’s Excellence Awardees and winners. The Canadian Law Awards continue to highlight those whose work reflects clarity of thought, strength of judgment, and a commitment to progress. These are the qualities that will carry the profession forward.

We also extend our thanks to our partners, whose support makes this event possible: Lawson Lundell LLP, Singleton Urquhart Reynolds Vogel LLP, Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP, PwC, and Dean Davidson.

www.lawawards.ca

#LawAwardsCA

VIP SUPPORTERS

PRESENTED BY

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SUPPORTING PUBLICATION

ORGANIZER

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Canadian LAW AWARDS 2026

CASE AWARD Judged on a single case’s size and complexity and the extent to which it set new standards of excellence in the delivery of legal services by the team

COMMERCIAL LITIGATION TEAM OF THE YEAR WINNER � McCarthy Tétrault LLP; Olthuis Kleer Townshend LLP - Shamattawa First Nation v.

Canada (Attorney General), 2025 FC 1927

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES

� Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb LLP; McCarthy Tetrault LLP; Bennett Jones LLP; Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP Métis National Council Secretariat Inc. v. Chartier, 2025 ONSC 6150

� Bennett Jones LLP - Dow Chemical Canada ULC v.

NOVA Chemicals Corporation, 2025 ABKB 217, 2025 ABKB 343, 2025 ABKB 467

� Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP; Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb LLP - Quadrangle v. Attorney General of Canada, 2025 ONSC 4526

� Bennett Jones LLP - Remington Development Corporation v. Canadian Pacific Railway Company, 2025 ABCA 244

� Torys LLP; Stikeman Elliot LLP; Bennett Jones LLP; Loopstra Nixon LLP; Lenczner Slaght LLP; Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP; Thornton Grout Finnigan LLP; Camelino Galessiere LLP; Tyr LLP; Blaney McMurtry LLP; Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb LLP - In Re Hudson’s Bay Company, 2025 ONSC 5998

� Borden Ladner Gervais LLP; Stikeman Elliott; Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP; Dentons Canada LLP - Republic of India, et al. v. CCDM Holdings, LLC, et al., 2025 CanLII 94240

IN-HOUSE AWARDS Judged on the quantity, quality, importance, and innovativeness of legal work performed during calendar year 2025

THE LAWSON LUNDELL LLP AWARD FOR

LAW DEPARTMENT LEADER OF THE YEAR WINNER

PROUDLY SPONSORED BY

� Lisa Damiani, Canadian Tire Corporation

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES � Corinne Pruzanski, Cadillac Fairview (CF)

� Nickola Voegelin, University of Waterloo

� Gaurav Manhas, OpenRoad Group

� Rustam Juma, Volkswagen Group Canada

� Jeremy Trickett, BCI (British Columbia Investment Management Corporation)

� Samantha Traub, Boat Rocker Studios Limited

� Jessica Long, Allstate Canada Group

� Sue Lynn Noel, Purolator Inc.

Lawson Lundell is a full-service business law firm in Western and Northern Canada known for its practical and strategic approach to legal and business problems. The Firm has more than 200 lawyers located in offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Yellowknife and Kelowna. www.lawsonlundell.com

� Lorne O’Reilly, KC, Dow Chemical Canada ULC

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION – IN-HOUSE WINNER Melissa Kennedy, Sun Life

This award recognizes and celebrates a leader with a minimum of 30 years of experience who has contributed significantly to advancing Canada’s legal profession or justice system.

46 www.lawawards.ca

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THE SINGLETON URQUHART REYNOLDS VOGEL LLP AWARD FOR

CONSTRUCTION, INFRASTRUCTURE AND TRANSPORTATION LAW DEPARTMENT OF THE YEAR

LAW DEPARTMENT INNOVATION

WINNER

WINNER

PROUDLY SPONSORED BY

� Ontario Power Generation Inc.

� CPP Investments

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES � Arcadis � BC Hydro Legal Services � Black & McDonald � Canada Infrastructure Bank � Dow Chemical Canada ULC � Graham Group Ltd. c/o Jamie

Olsen, General Counsel, Canada � Pembina Pipeline Corporation Legal Department � Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority

We are a preeminent canadian construction and infrastructure law firm.

Our peers and clients recognize our lawyers as the best in the construction industry.

Over forty years of leadership in canadian construction and infrastructure law is complemented by a broad offering of legal services in litigation and corporate transactions.

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES � Jobber Legal Team � Oxford Properties Group Legal Department � Volkswagen Group Canada

The winner of this category will automatically progress to become a finalist in Canadian Law Department of the Year.

BANKING & FINANCIAL SERVICES LAW DEPARTMENT OF THE YEAR

CANADIAN LAW DEPARTMENT OF THE YEAR

WINNER

WINNER

� CPP Investments

MDA Space Legal Team

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES ATB Financial Legal & Governance Team Beneva EVP Legal and Corporate services

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES iA Financial Group

Brookfield Properties

Legal and External Affairs Division (LEAD) at Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP)

CPP Investments

First Canadian Title Company The Hiive Company Limited Limited (FCT) Vancity The winner of this category will automatically progress to become a finalist in Canadian Law Department of the Year.

Geotab’s In-House IP Boutique Team Harlequin and HarperCollins Canada Office of General Counsel – KPMG LLP

Ontario Power Generation Inc. Oxford Properties Group SE Health University of Toronto Volkswagen Group Canada

Winners of the two sector-specific law department awards will automatically progress to become finalists for this category.

FIRM AWARDS Judged on the quantity, quality, importance, and innovativeness of legal work performed during calendar year 2025

BOUTIQUE LAW FIRM OF THE YEAR

LITIGATION & DISPUTE RESOLUTION BOUTIQUE LAW FIRM OF THE YEAR

WINNER

WINNER

Hicks Morley Hamilton Stewart Storie LLP

Lenczner Slaght

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES AGP LLP

Neuberger & Partners LLP

Gluckstein Lawyers

Roper Greyell LLP

Green and Spiegel LLP

Smart & Biggar

MacLean Law

Adair Goldblatt Bieber LLP Goldblatt Partners LLP Henein Hutchison Robitaille LLP Jensen Shawa Solomon Duguid

Hawkes LLP

Lax O’Sullivan Lisus

Gottlieb LLP

Singleton Urquhart

Reynolds Vogel LLP

Stockwoods LLP Thomson Rogers LLP

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Canadian LAW AWARDS 2026

LITIGATOR OF THE YEAR

REGIONAL LAW FIRM OF THE YEAR

WINNER

Michael Rosenberg, McCarthy Tétrault LLP

WINNERS

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES

Brandon Barnes Trickett, Dentons Canada LLP Greg Allen, Allen / McMillan Litigation Counsel Matthew Williams, Thorsteinssons LLP

Atlantic Canada

Rahool Agarwal, Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb LLP

Stéphane Pitre, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP Tracey M. Cohen, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP

Ontario

Atlantic Canada

WINNER Cliff Proudfoot, KC, Lawson Lundell LLP

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES

Carissa N. Tanzola, Filion Wakely Thorup Angeletti LLP

James Murdoch, Thorsteinssons LLP

Kurt E. Schlachter, KC, Stringam Law

Sara Mainville, JFK Law LLP

Shawn Wolfson, Blaney McMurtry LLP

BEST USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN A LAW FIRM WINNER

Ontario

Farris LLP

Lawson Lundell LLP

McKercher LLP

MLT Aikins LLP

Parlee McLaws LLP

Witten LLP

Gardiner Roberts LLP Perley-Robertson, Hill & McDougall LLP/s.r.l.

Torkin Manes LLP

WeirFoulds LLP

Boughton Law Corporation

Quebec

De Grandpré Chait

Dunton Rainville LLP

Lavery

Stein Monast LLP

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION – PRIVATE PRACTICE WINNER

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES

Brian Gover, Stockwoods LLP

 Litco Law  McInnes Cooper  V-Law

Western Canada

Curtis Dawe

 Torys LLP

 Caravel Law  Gowling WLG  KMSC LAW LLP

Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer LLP

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES

Quebec Langlois Lawyers LLP Western Canada

Lerners LLP

Vincent Rochette, Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP

MANAGING PARTNER OF THE YEAR

McInnes Cooper

This award recognizes and celebrates a leader with a minimum of 30 years of experience who has contributed significantly to advancing Canada’s legal profession or justice system.

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LEGAL PROFESSION AWARDS DIVERSITY INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR WINNER  PooranLaw Professional Corporation - PooranLaw’s Pathways to Inclusion: Reducing Barriers for People with

Disabilities & Their Families EXCELLENCE AWARDEES  Aird & Berlis LLP - Angela Swan’s Memoir Initiative: Kindness Over Everything  Dentons Canada LLP - Belonging@Dentons Trans Inclusion Policy

 Fasken - Journey to Reconciliation  Gale Law Professional Corporation - The NCA Network  Gowling WLG - Avenue Program

PRO BONO INITIATIVE OF THE YEAR WINNER  PooranLaw Professional Corporation - I Decide Law Program

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES  Baker McKenzie; Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg

LLP - Northern Super League/AFC Toronto Mandate  Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb LLP; Stockwoods LLP - The Neighbourhood Group et al. v. HMKRO/ The Neighbourhood Group v Ontario - constitutional challenge to keep safe consumption sites in Ontario open  Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP - Working with the Canada Infrastructure Bank (the CIB), supporting its Indigenous Community Infrastructure Initiative (ICII)

 Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP - Cycle Toronto et al. v. Attorney General of Ontario et al.  Torys LLP - Community and Legal Aid Services Program (CLASP) Digital Hub  Yinka Law - ALL-IN MEDIA INC. Creation & HUNT v.

TREVISAN et al. DIV COURT FILE 809/24

FEMALE TRAILBLAZER OF THE YEAR WINNER

WINNER

Academia & In-House

Private Practice

Shara Roy, EY Canada

Martha Harrison, McCarthy Tétrault LLP

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES

EXCELLENCE AWARDEES

Amy Salyzyn, University of Ottawa

Aneka Jiwaji, Jiwaji Law

Angela Yadav, Vancity

Daniela M. Pacheco, Neinstein

Ashley Butts, BDO Canada LLP

Jamie Mandell, DLA Piper

Christy Elliott, Keyera Corp.

Jennifer Wasylyk, Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP

Debbie Caruso, Healthcare of Ontario Pension

Laurie LaPalme, Dentons Canada LLP

Plan (HOOPP)

Shailaz Dhalla, Lawson Lundell LLP

Heather Mullen, Kenvue Canada Inc.

Sharon Vogel, Singleton Urquhart Reynolds Vogel LLP

Laura Paglia, Canadian Forum for Financial

Shira Kalfa, Kalfa Law

Markets (CFFiM)

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Canadian LAW AWARDS 2026

2026 JUDGING PANEL Thank you to our esteemed judges for lending their time and expertise to help recognize and celebrate excellence in the legal profession.

Macdonald Allen Partner - Litigation Practice Group WeirFoulds LLP

Stephen Beney Principal Smart & Biggar

Michael Casey Senior VP and General Counsel EllisDon

Nicholas Cerminaro Senior Vice President and General Counsel GardaWorld

Lauren Cook Global Corporate Counsel, Environment and Regulatory Teck Resources Limited

George Cooper, KC Chief Executive Officer and Partner Cox & Palmer

Lindsay Cox Partner Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer, LLP

Bindu Cudjoe General Counsel, Canadian Banking TD Bank

Lydia de Guzman VP & Chief Counsel, Group Benefits Manulife

Vincent de l’Etoile Partner, Litigation Group; Member Board of Directors Langlois Lawyers, LLP

Camille De Mers Partner - Business Law Group Lavery

Martin K. Denyes Firm Chair Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP

Enzo Di Iorio Chair Miller Thomson LLP

David Di Paolo National Managing Partner and CEO Borden Ladner Gervais LLP (BLG)

Frédéric Duguay General Counsel & Corporate Secretary Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB)

Anita Dusevic Oliva Executive Vice-President, General Counsel, Chief Risk Officer and Chief Compliance Officer TC Energy

Paul Fruitman Partner Lax O’Sullivan Lisus Gottlieb LLP

Aileen Gien General Counsel & Corporate Secretary Capstone Infrastructure Corporation

Monique Jilesen Managing Partner Lenczner Slaght

Philippe Johnson Managing Partner, Montreal Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP

David M. Kramer Senior Legal Counsel Suncor Energy Inc.

François Lajeunesse Conseiller juridique principal / Senior Legal Counsel Desjardins Group

Sophie Lamonde Managing Partner Stikeman Elliott LLP

Adrian Lang Chief Legal and Privacy Officer Staples Canada

Dale H. Lastman, C.M. Chair Goodmans LLP

Brian Lerner Partner MLT Atkins

Jennifer Manning Director and Senior Counsel Legal Affairs BCI

Carlton Mathias Chief Legal, ESG and Governance Officer Ontario Power Generation

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Blair McCreadie Managing Partner, Toronto Dentons Canada LLP

Melanie McGrath General Counsel CBCL Limited

Chelsea McKay Hazewinkel, K.C. Chief Legal Officer Paladin Security Group Ltd

Dave J.G. McKechnie Partner, Employment & Labour Relations McMillan LLP

Benjamin Na Managing Partner, Toronto Gowling WLG (Canada) LLP

Teodora Niculae Senior Counsel Mastercard

Lorne O’Reilly, KC Lead Counsel Dow Chemical Canada ULC

Benoit Palmer Chief Counsel, Minerals, Legal Services Conseiller juridique principal, Minerals, Services juridiques Rio Tinto

Heather Platt Chief Legal Officer Metrolinx

Karrin A. PowysLybbe Partner Torys LLP

Emmanuel Pressman Chair, Corporate Department Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP

Clifford G. Proudfoot, KC Managing Partner Lawson Lundell LLP

Bruce Reynolds Co-Managing Partner, Mediator and Arbitrator Singleton Urquhart Reynolds Vogel LLP

Luisa Ritacca Managing Partner Stockwoods LLP

Tracy Ross Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Global Businesses and Products RBC

Bo Rothstein Managing Partner Farris LLP

Shara Roy Chief Legal Counsel Ernst & Young LLP

Yasmin Shaker General Counsel and Corporate Secretary Invest Ontario

David Snarch Vice President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary MDA Space

Bryson A. Stokes Firm Managing Partner Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP

David Taniguchi Vice President, Legal & Corporate Secretary Enbridge Inc.

Kristin Taylor Managing Partner Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP

Jennifer Teskey Managing Partner, Canada Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP

Yasmin Visram Associate General Counsel, Canadian Affairs iA Financial Group

Patrice Walch-Watson Senior Managing Director, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary Canada Pension Plan Investment Board

Andrea Wood Executive Vice President and Chief Legal and Governance Officer TELUS

Caroline Zayid Managing Partner, Ontario Region McCarthy Tétrault LLP

DEAL CATEGORIES See our feature on Top Deals in the Lexpert April Finance and M&A 2026 Special Edition.

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SPECIAL REPORT

Top

CRIMINAL LAW BOUTIQUES

2026-27

Canadian Lawyer reveals the top criminal law firms nationwide that are distinguished by their ability to deliver effective defence in the most demanding cases 52

CONTENTS

PAGE

Feature article............................................................ 53

Methodology ............................................................. 53

Top Criminal Law Boutiques 2026–27 .................. 56

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PREPARED TO DEFEND WHEN Canadian Lawyer’s readers weigh up what defines criminal defence excellence, the verdict rests on courtroom advocacy. It’s the visible measure of a lawyer’s ability and a fundamental factor in how firms earn their reputation.

Criminal defence also occupies a significant place within Canada’s legal services sector. According to IBISWorld, law firm revenue was projected to reach $21.4 billion by 2025, with steady annual growth.

Legal aid plan expenditures further provide a gauge of the size of criminal defence work. Justice Canada reports that legal aid plans spent more than $1.15 billion in 2023–24, with 52 percent tied to criminal matters, representing approximately $617 million in criminal legal aid work.

Legal aid data also illustrates the volume of criminal defence work moving through the courts. In 2023–24, plans received 585,982 applications, including 299,934 criminal matters, which accounted for 51 percent of all legal aid applications. Duty counsel provided 1,418,093 assists nationwide in the same year.

CL invited readers to rank the country’s Top Criminal Law Boutiques from a preliminary list, with the option to nominate additional firms. The process produced 47 nominated firms and 325 votes. The results of the national vote were then combined with input from senior members of the bar and regional considerations.

What wins cases today Courtroom advocacy was the critical element in measuring criminal defence. It is

where arguments are tested and outcomes decided. But across this year’s top criminal law firms, advocacy is the result of a meticulous process.

Preparation is at the heart of that approach and runs through every stage of a case. Firms point to detailed knowledge of the record, command of the law, and the development of a strategy that can withstand challenges.

Top Criminal Law Boutiques in Canada Bottos Law Group, based in Edmonton, Alberta, practises exclusively in criminal law and regulatory offences, and has been involved in many of Alberta’s high-profile criminal cases. Founded in 2012, the firm represents clients across serious matters ranging from homicide and sexual assault to fraud, drug offences, and impaired driving, with work spanning trial courts and appeals.

“It comes down to four things: knowledge, judgment, preparation, and delivery,” says Dino Bottos, K.C. He explains that the first three elements lead to the fourth and that they all remain active throughout the course of litigation and trial.

Bottos says effective criminal defence advocacy includes having a keen awareness of the facts and evidence, as well as proficiency in the substantive law and the law of evidence related to the matter; continuously adjusting how best to defend the client and determining the most appropriate course of action; undertaking extensive preparation,

METHODOLOGY In January, Canadian Lawyer asked readers from across Canada to vote on criminal law boutiques. The readers were asked to rank their top firms from a preliminary list, with a chance to nominate a firm that was not included. To be considered in the vote, firms were required to have the majority of their business come from their work in criminal law.

The quantitative results were combined with input from senior members of the bar and regional diversity considerations.

which is the most time-consuming part of going to trial and may take months or even years; and delivering the defence strategy through professional submissions, crossexaminations, and persuasive advocacy to demonstrate to the judge and jury that the client has a credible case and a rational path to acquittal.

Daniel Brown Law LLP handles a large volume of trials and appeals while building a national reputation for appellate advocacy.

The Toronto-based firm operates a collaborative litigation model that combines trial work with a strong focus on appeals and precedent-setting cases.

“You need preparation, preparation, and preparation. You need to be authoritative and cutting-edge about the law, and you need to know your client and their human

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SPECIAL REPORT

TOP CRIMINAL LAW BOUTIQUES 2026–27

tion, and regulatory capacity, with significant consequences for clients caught in complex, interjurisdictional investigations,” he says.

This multidimensional advocacy highlights a model where the courtroom is only one element of a wider strategic environment. Even at its most technical, advocacy remains grounded in decision-making. The difference between winning and losing often comes down to choices made under pressure, informed by experience and judgment.

WHAT CL VOTERS SAY DEFINES LEADING CRIMINAL LAW FIRMS Courtroom advocacy

28% Criminal law expertise

20% Professional reputation

17% Client service

14% Standing within the bar

9% Contribution to the profession

7% Team culture and membership

5% 0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Share of mentions (%)

story,” says partner Hilary Dudding. “The second element is the ability to pivot. You need to be limber and nimble. Things move fast, and the more chaos can become your tool, the more effective you’re going to be as an advocate.”

She emphasizes mastery of the record combined with adaptability in cases shaped by digital evidence and fast-moving developments as crucial to cutting through the noise and making the strongest possible case.

Beyond preparation, firms point to strategy as the differentiator. Advocacy is shaped through early decisions about how a case is positioned, which issues are advanced, and how risk is managed before a trial ever begins.

AGP LLP defends complex criminal cases through trial and appeal, including matters before the Supreme Court of Canada. The Ottawa-based firm has grown from a small defence practice into a seasoned litigation team handling serious and high-profile cases.

“Quite often, the most efficient and effective advocacy is done outside of court, before a trial ever reaches the courtroom door,” says partner Michael Spratt. “Courtroom advocacy is obviously very important, but it’s really the tip of the iceberg.”

This approach treats courtroom advocacy as part of a broader strategy that includes

54

negotiation, issue narrowing, and resolution before trial, reinforcing the firm’s ability to deliver effective outcomes.

For leading law firms operating in complex or high-stakes matters, advocacy extends further. It requires coordination across multiple fronts, including regulatory exposure, civil liability, and reputational risk.

Narwal Litigation LLP focuses on highstakes trials and appeals involving criminal, securities, and regulatory matters from its Vancouver office. The firm represents individuals and corporations in complex criminal, regulatory, and white-collar investigations across Canada.

Managing partner Joven Narwal, K.C., explains that domestic investigations increasingly evolve into multi-jurisdictional matters and are often shaped by shifting geopolitical priorities and enforcement agendas.

He notes that effective advocacy requires anticipating collateral regulatory and civil consequences, managing reputational risk, coordinating parallel domestic proceedings, navigating cross-border and international enforcement activity, and ensuring that strategic decisions align with a client’s broader vulnerabilities and objectives.

“As I have noted publicly in my teaching and writing, these shifts often expose gaps between legislative intent, enforcement ambi-

Weisberg Law Criminal Lawyers LLP, based in Toronto, defends serious criminal matters across Ontario, including homicide, sexual assault, drug, and fraud cases. The newly minted top-tier firm’s lawyers appear regularly in trial and appellate courts, handling complex matters across the criminal justice system.

“Knowing the law, mastering the facts, and developing persuasive arguments are the base of what is required for effective criminal defence advocacy,” says managing partner Adam Weisberg.

This illustrates a focus on tactics and execution, where preparation and legal knowledge are necessary, but not sufficient on their own.

Managing complexity in modern litigation Criminal defence finds firms dealing with larger disclosures, digital evidence, and cases that extend across multiple legal and regulatory domains.

The most immediate change for lawyers is the growth of digital evidence. Files now include extensive video, data, and documentation that must be reviewed, organized, and analyzed within tight timelines.

The key skill is identifying what matters within large volumes of disclosure, ensuring critical evidence is not overlooked. At AGP, efficiency and focus define effective case management in data-heavy files.

“It used to be a VHS tape with a minute of grainy security footage. Now we receive hours of high-definition footage

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from multiple camera angles, including body cameras. We’re also given extensive documentation and statements,” explains Spratt. “The amount of material to digest, cross-reference, and synthesize is immense. That’s an important skill to develop because time is our most precious resource. You don’t get second chances.

Missing one key piece of evidence in a large disclosure can make the difference between winning and losing.”

That expansion is not confined to disclosure. Criminal practice now extends across white-collar matters, cross-border enforcement, and emerging areas involving AI and social media.

Heather Suttie, legal market strategy and management consultant at Suttie, says, “This type of expansion calls for individuals with dedicated knowledge and expertise in a narrow range of particular criminal law fields who have a deep, range-relevant client representation track record, as well as demonstrable courtroom performance when required.”

Preparation begins earlier, and strategy must account for evidentiary issues well before trial, particularly in areas where legal thresholds are higher.

Cases must be understood early, with a strategy developed months in advance to address evidentiary hurdles before trial, explains Bottos. It’s an approach that treats early case analysis as essential to trial success.

“For example, in a sexual assault case, which I do a lot of, there is now a lot of restriction on what you may think is usable evidence to assist your client, but that usable evidence may not be usable at all if you don’t think through your strategy as to how it’s going to be presented in court and be prepared for the legal hurdles you’ll have to cross to make that happen,” Bottos adds.

The pace of legal change has also accelerated. Top criminal law firms must track developments in areas such as charter litigation and sexual assault while adapting to new evidentiary frameworks.

Daniel Brown Law has responded by investing in knowledge, working collabora-

tively, and preparing for how the law may evolve as well as where it stands now.

A team-based model strengthens analysis in complex cases, according to Dudding. “The analysis benefits from multiple perspectives before the strategy is set,” she says. “That includes the senior litigation partnership, but we also benefit from an extremely strong team of junior lawyers who come from different places and backgrounds. That allows us to handle the most complex litigation with confidence.”

For some practices, complexity often involves parallel proceedings, regulatory exposure, and international elements, such as those handled by Narwal Litigation.

“We have built a model designed for this reality,” says Narwal. “We are a unique criminal defence firm with a multidisciplinary foundation that enables us to represent clients whose matters do not fit nicely within practice area categories and frequently involve simultaneous proceedings across multiple forums.”

That approach includes integrating strategic crisis management and proactive regulatory engagement alongside courtroom advocacy.

Firms are also adapting through internal collaboration and technology, using shared expertise and tools to manage increasingly demanding files, as is the case at Weisberg Law Criminal Lawyers.

“We play to our strengths to benefit our clients,” says Weisberg. “We also run internal educational programming to keep our firm members up to date on the latest changes in criminal law.”

Technology plays a growing role in that process, particularly in preparing and organizing large volumes of material. Its value, however, depends on how it is applied.

Suttie notes that technology and AI will continue to enable early-stage case preparation. However, law is a people business, with criminal law being one of the few areas where process and resolution affect individuals, their families, and communities.

“Humanity is both our greatest curse and strength, which means using tech tools for what they can provide, balanced against and augmented by human traits of consideration and judgment,” she adds.

The role is more than it seems The work of the criminal defence bar is often described in terms of representation. In practice, it is structural to the justice system.

Defence counsel ensures that the state meets its burden, evidence is tested, and legal standards are applied as they are written.

This work is continuous and often unseen.

Bottos frames the defence bar as a structural safeguard within the justice system, ensuring that state power is tested and outcomes are reached through process.

“You cannot have a fair trial if you do not have a prepared and zealous advocate for the accused, up against the potentially overwhelming power of the state,” he says.

“Some people in the public understand that defence lawyers have a role, but I sometimes think they don’t appreciate just how important that role is to maintaining integrity in the entire criminal justice system so that any verdict is fair and just and not simply the product of power imparted by the state against the individual.”

In many cases, defence lawyers operate with fewer resources than the institutions they oppose. The work requires managing administrative demands while maintaining focus on client outcomes.

AGP’s Spratt says that over the past few years, a significant amount of work and cost has been downloaded onto the criminal defence bar.

Firms have taken on many responsibilities while lacking the same institutional support as the Crown, such as access to government resources, investigative teams, or forensic labs.

“We’re used to doing more with less. It can be challenging, but it’s part of the job if you want to achieve results,” Spratt adds. “Ultimately, our role is to hold the state to account and ensure that individual rights and civil liberties are upheld.”

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SPECIAL REPORT

TOP CRIMINAL LAW BOUTIQUES 2026–27

The role also extends beyond individual cases. Daniel Brown Law’s Dudding says members of the criminal defence bar are the people holding the state to account every day.

“If we are not willing to challenge the Crown’s case rigorously in every case, no matter how popular or unpopular the litigant or the cause, constitutional rights start to become theoretical,” she explains. “We sometimes need to take a step back and remember that no individual accused person, case, or complainant stands for the whole system.”

In some practices, the work includes guiding clients through personal and practical challenges in addition to legal defence.

Weisberg says, “Our help might include bettering the client’s insight into their own personal situations and assisting by connecting them with resources to improve their life or address past traumas.”

For Narwal, the role of the defence bar crosses over to managing systemic risk across jurisdictions. In complex matters involving overlapping criminal, regulatory, and civil exposure, defence counsel coordinate strategy across multiple proceedings, anticipate collateral consequences, and align legal decisions with a client’s broader vulnerabilities and objectives.

Conclusion: what the Top Criminal Law Boutiques in Canada understand Across Canada’s leading criminal law boutiques, a common understanding of effective advocacy has taken shape. It is grounded not only in courtroom skill but also in the strategic, often unseen work that determines how cases are built, managed, and ultimately resolved.

• The most important advocacy often leaves no record: Decisions that change the course of a case are frequently made in negotiations, disclosure strategy, and issue selection, not in open court.

• Reputation functions as a form of leverage: Credibility does more than build trust; it shapes how cases are managed, how issues are narrowed, and whether resolution is possible.

• Complexity is no longer an exception: It defines routine practice, where digital evidence and parallel exposure are part of the file.

INSIGHTS As part of our editorial process, Canadian Lawyer’s researchers interviewed the subject matter expert below for an independent analysis of this report and its findings.

Heather Suttie Legal Market Strategy and Management Consultant Suttie

TOP CRIMINAL LAW BOUTIQUES 2026‑27 OTTAWA AND MONTREAL

Addario Law Group LLP

AGP LLP

Phone: 416 979 6446 Email: ssecter@addario.ca Website: addario.ca

Phone: 613 235 9779 Email: michael@agpllp.ca Website: agpllp.ca Battista Turcot Israel Corbo, s.e.n.c.

Bayne Sellar Ertel Macrae Edelson Foord Law Shadley Knerr, s.e.n.c.r.l.

TORONTO Daniel Brown Law LLP Phone: 416 297 7200 Email: brown@danielbrownlaw.ca Website: danielbrownlaw.ca Neuberger & Partners LLP Phone: 416 364 3111 Email: joseph@nrlawyers.com Website: nrlawyers.com Weisberg Law Criminal Lawyers LLP Phone: 416 605 4811 Email: adam@weisberg.ca Website: weisberg.ca

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Cooper, Sandler, Shime & Schwartzentruber LLP Embry Dann LLP Fenton Law Barristers Greenspan Humphrey Makepeace LLP Lacy Naster LLP Lockyer Zaduk Zeeh

WESTERN Bottos Law Group Phone: 780 940 6060 Email: dbottos@bottoslaw.ca Website: bottoslaw.ca Narwal Litigation LLP Phone: 604 681 2226 Email: jn@narwallit.com Website: narwallitigation.com O’Brien Devlin MacLeod Peck and Company Pringle Law

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